NewSpace India Ltd. (NSIL) will now be responsible for functioning and maintaining 10 in-orbit satellites. The transfer from the government of India to the company under the Department of Space was approved by the Cabinet during a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The union cabinet also gave its nod to increasing the budget of the government-owned company. NSIL’s authorized share capital has now been increased from Rs 1000 crore to Rs 7500 crore.
“Transfer of these assets to NSIL will further provide the desired financial autonomy to the company to realize capital intensive programmes/projects and thereby offering huge employment potential and technology spin-off to other sectors of the economy,” the government said in a statement.
The cabinet in its note also said that this approval is expected to trigger domestic economic activity in the space sector and increase India’s share in the global space market.
“The Space Sector reforms mandated NSIL to undertake end-to-end commercial space activities and function as a full-fledged satellite operator. NSIL functioning as a single-window operator will also facilitate the ease of doing business in the space sector,” the Cabinet said in a statement adding that NSIL Board will now be empowered to price the transponders as per the market dynamics and global trends in the Satellite Communication sector.
The government Public Sector Enterprise (PSU) is also authorised to offer and allocate capacity as per its internal policies and guidelines.
NSIL is the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) with the primary responsibility of enabling Indian industries to take up high technology space-related activities and is also responsible for the promotion and commercial exploitation of the products and services emanating from the Indian space programme.
The commercial conducted its first mission in 20221 when it successfully launched Amazonia-1 and 18 Co-passenger satellites from Sriharikota. The 18 co-passenger satellites onboard PSLV-C51 include four from IN-SPACe and fourteen from NSIL. Out of 4 satellites from IN-SPACe, three were UNITYsats.
