[kartikkumar]

Awesome! Really great work and it's great to see more success stories from the Indian startup scene. It's particularly heartening that a bootstrapped company can get there. I was working on trying to lay the groundwork for startup in Bangalore last year and was told by many people that I'd fail for the simple reason that government regulation would kill me. There are in fact two spaces that I've been wanting to enter into India: space and education.

On the back of your experiences, I think I feel that maybe I shouldn't feel as discouraged.

Would love to hear more about your journey and the problems you conquered.

Good luck going international!

[nutanc]

Government regulation will try its best to make it hard, but it will not kill you :)

Actually, things have improved a lot and in fact the Government is now doing pretty good things in trying to encourage startups, especially the Karnataka and Kerala Governments, where they have setup separate funds for startups.

Space may be a little bit of problem with regulation. But with education startups, you shouldn't have too many issues.

I will write a blog post soon on our learnings in the past 3 years.

[kartikkumar]

Great! Thanks for the feedback and looking forward to the blog post! I'm flying out to Mumbai on Thursday and will be in Bangalore for a few days too, so going to use the opportunity to try and figure out how, what, where, when, and with whom. Any tips, suggestions?

[nutanc]

You can find my email on my profile. Please feel free to shoot an email and I will try to introduce you to some nice startup folks in both places.

By the way, you just missed the Product Conclave by Nasscom. This event started today and will go on till Wednesday and would have been an awesome opportunity for you to network with startup minded folks in India.

[kartikkumar]

Thanks! Will shoot you an email after I grab some lunch. Would be great to make the most of this trip and network with startup folks in Mumbai and/or Bangalore.

Shame, sounds like a great event. Perhaps there are others over the next 3 weeks. I'll Google around.

[kamaal]

Nice, I'm from Bangalore.

Just wondering what ideas you have on start up's in the Space Industry.

Is there something specific you are aiming at?

[kartikkumar]

Nice! Yes there is in fact ... the small-satellite sector. My background is in Aerospace Engineering so I have quite a good grip on the state of technology and of the market. Last year I spoke to various interested parties in Bangalore, including ISRO, DRDO, and Mahindra Aerospace. I also gave a talk at PESIT in Bangalore at a SpaceUp conference [1], organized by a space startup called DhruvaSpace (who I had advanced talks with to partner with) [2].

The main problem was that although everyone was very excited, to the point of telling me that I'd be crazy not to enter this space (double-meaning intended) in India right now, they also told me to be ready to rip my hair out and scream, not because the startup ecosystem isn't ready for it, but because government regulations are opening things up VERY slowly. People were telling me that nothing will happen within 5 years, possibly 10, so it's a BIG time investment and effort to tussle with government.

I'm still really excited at the ideas I have, because I think they can promote commercial and social use of satellite technology in India to tackle a wide range of problems that my market research indicated are current and real.

[1] http://spaceupindia.org/?page_id=115 [2] http://dhruvaspace.com/

[kamaal]

Thanks, As some one working a lot in my spare time and weekends in hopes of doing good side projects, and may be transform it to a business someday. Gives me great hope to see such things happening especially in the Bangalore scene.

I can understand the obvious limitations and regulations the government may likely to place on space industry. Very licenses and permissions may require paying up heavy commissions/bribes- Every one wants a piece of that black money, they are not going to bring in free market reforms here, Because they know once that comes in there will be cut throat competition. Government workplaces won't be able to deal with the quality, quantity and speed of development and will have to ultimately shut down. The reforms will come only if they are sure the industry will die anyway, and would like private players to salvage something out of it.

Will read up on small satellite design. You are very correct that we can solve a ton of problems with small satellites.

Do you know of any good resources to start reading up upon?

[kartikkumar]

Yea, I don't want to get into any shady dealings, and my worry is that especially in a government-dominated sector like the space industry in India, it's very difficult to make headway unless you do. I'm willing to wait it out to some extent, but I guess I have a very short fuse when it comes to idiocy. That's eventually why I decided to wait with the idea.

The other area that I'm really interested in is the MOOC space in India. So I might target that otherwise if it's an easier area to break into.

There's a good page on the NASA website about small sat tech [1]. In addition, there are lotsa specific implementations that you can read about online, like the Cubesat architecture, Cansats etc. And finally, I'd look to university websites to see what tech they're deploying. In Delft, where I'm doing my PhD, we have an on-going small sat program. The first satellite, Delfi-C3 was a great success. Delft-NeXT is going to be launched next month [2].

[1] http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/small_spacecraft/... [2] http://www.delfispace.nl/index.php/delfi-n3xt

[ksoti]

Are there any MOOC startups you know of, in India, that one can get involved in?

[kartikkumar]

Actually I don't but I have some ideas of my own that I'd like to test out at some point and see if they fit my model of what the education space in India needs.

There are some interesting articles online and a fair bit off buzz around Indian MOOCs, like [1].

[1] http://www.edukwest.com/first-indian-mooc-will-launch-in-oct...