Even as a child, Dr Srimathy Kesan had the entrepreneurial bug. At the time her family lived in Hyderabad, and would make frequent visits to their hometown Rameshwaram. There, Srimathy would purchase shells and Sungudi saris from Madurai, and sell the same to ‘aunties’ at Hyderabad for a slightly higher cost. “It used to give me a kick, even if I earned just ₹5 or ₹10,” she chuckles. “I feel every woman is an entrepreneur by birth because we have that convincing capacity. It's just that ROI (return on investment) we don't get for what we do.”
Marriage and motherhood beckoned, and for 16 years, Srimathy was a homemaker, until she finally decided to plunge into entrepreneurship and enter the unlikely field of aerospace. “Rocket science is considered to be extremely difficult, but I think some children have it within them to excel at it. I know professionally it is done at ISRO, but I asked myself, if given a platform, could these children do it? That's when I started Space Kidz and moved to satellite research. We've launched about 25 satellites, 18 balloon satellites, three suborbital satellites and four orbital launches since then.”
She started by handpicking a team of students. “We are the only ones in India doing this, even perhaps in the world. Everywhere else, they have professionals and scientists as advisors. We have none of these. We do the research and development, learning our lessons through make-and-break moments. This is our USP. Yes, being a woman is challenging, especially because I’m not from an aerospace or engineering background. I’m a commerce graduate. But if there is a will there is a way. You don’t have to be a scientist or engineer to make other engineers and scientists. I wanted to create scientists, especially space scientists for the country, as young as high school kids. People mocked me and laughed initially. They said that because I’d sat at home for 16 years, I had lost it and was trying to do something impossible. But when people say something is impossible, the bug itches and I feel I have to do it!”
Srimathy is the only Indian to have been decorated with the Ambassador status at three prestigious space centres - NASA, GCTC (Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center) in Moscow and the European Space Center in Brussels. But that hasn’t made the journey easier for her.
“Initially, it was very difficult to access equipment. So, necessity was the mother of invention! My house was a jugaad place; my kitchen was a jugaad place, wherein you do the heat test with boiling water, spin test with a fan, and cold test with the freezer. Initially, we started with BalloonSAT, which is high-altitude ballooning. It doesn’t require big labs and equipment. We understood this whole process step by step. It's not a product where you can do a prototype, test it, feel the market and then retweak it. This involves huge money. People did not even understand what high-altitude ballooning was. To get permission, I had to spend three months outside government offices. Still, they did not understand. They thought it was hot air ballooning! But once you decide you want to do something, you will get your nuances right to convince people. Women especially, are too good at it.”
Space Kidz is currently moving from the R&D phase to the commercial phase, that is commercialisation of satellites. They already have 10 universities and research schools that have signed up with them commercially. They’ve also built their satellite buses, wherein any passenger can be put into the bus and be taken into space.
“We are very confident about that and will be the first to do that. Our main attraction is to go to the moon as economically as possible. Our brand is going to be ‘Space Rickshaw’, which we are going to be announcing very soon. We will be taking payloads as economically as possible to the moon because there's so much research that is yet to be done there. When we are successful with the moon, we want to do interplanetary missions.”
The recent satellite that Space Kidz launched on February 105h was AzaadiSAT. This was executed by 750 rural girls from Jammu & Kashmir to Kanyakumari. “People thought, ‘Why only girls?’ Girls who take STEM as their profession also lose out somewhere once they get married or after childbirth. They feel that it's not a 9-to-5 job and they're not paid well for what they are doing. What happens is that most of them lose out. So, I thought, catch them young. And how do we do that? We wanted to launch this satellite and prove to the world that STEM and girls go hand in hand.” The girls built 75 payloads for the 75th Independence Anniversary of India, and the AzaadiSAT was launched on the occasion. This is the first satellite in the world that has been built by 750 rural women.
Srimathy is upbeat about the future of the Indian space industry, as well as Space Kidz. “In the space industry, India only has a share of 2 per cent in the entire chunk. Only now we will start working towards the 2 billion market share of the space industry. India is in a strategic location for the launch. Our launch costs are absolutely economical with regard to PSLV and SSLV. So all this is an advantage, as well as the recent OneWeb launch of 36 satellites. I think all this has increased our market share globally. As for Space Kidz, we are looking at a total valuation of ₹50 crores. The experience is vast - 25 satellites to our belt and a couple of commercial launches that we have done. So, yes, we are sitting on a 50 crore belt!”
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