Skyroot Aerospace Brand Guidelines: Hyderabad, Vikram-S and Vikram-1 to Orbit

Two former ISRO scientists and a question about access to space.

Skyroot Aerospace was founded in Hyderabad in 2018 by Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka, two former scientists at ISRO, India’s national space agency, according to English Wikipedia. The company tells the same story on its own website: in 2018, it says, the two “space scientists-turned-entrepreneurs” asked what it would take for a launch to space to become as routine as commercial air travel. Chandana is the company’s chief executive and Daka its chief operating officer, its website says.

English Wikipedia places the company’s founding in a period when India opened its space sector to private firms: reforms introduced in 2020 let companies use certain ISRO facilities, under the oversight of a new regulator, IN-SPACe, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre. Skyroot’s launches since then have flown from ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, on India’s east coast.

The company’s own timeline runs year by year. It says it opened its first office in Hyderabad in 2018; in 2020 it fired Raman-1, which it describes as India’s first static fire test of a privately built rocket engine; and in 2021 it test-fired Dhawan-1, which it calls India’s first privately built cryogenic engine. English Wikipedia dates the unveiling of Dhawan-1 to September 2020 and describes it as a 3D-printed engine running on liquefied natural gas and liquid oxygen.

Prarambh, then Aagaman.

Skyroot’s first flight came on 18 November 2022. ISRO’s own mission page records that Vikram-S, a suborbital vehicle built by Skyroot, lifted off at 11:30 in the morning from the sounding-rocket launch complex at Sriharikota, carried three payloads and reached an altitude of about 89.5 kilometres in 155 seconds, “as planned.” ISRO called it the first launch of a launch vehicle built by a private company in India; the mission had been authorised by IN-SPACe. Skyroot named the flight Prarambh, “the beginning,” and describes Vikram-S as an all-carbon-composite rocket.

The orbital step followed in 2026. On 18 July 2026, The South First reported, Vikram-1 lifted off from the First Launch Pad at Sriharikota on a mission called Aagaman, “arrival,” and reached its target low Earth orbit of about 450 kilometres, deploying technology-demonstration payloads from Grahaa Space, Cosmoserve and DCubed alongside Skyroot’s own SCOPE satellite. The Indian government’s science and technology portal described Vikram-1 as the country’s first privately developed orbital-class rocket to reach orbit.

That portal gives the outline of the vehicle: three solid-propellant stages and a liquid-fuelled orbital adjustment module powered by a 3D-printed engine, with an all-carbon-composite structure and room for payloads of up to 350 kilograms to low Earth orbit. The engines carry the names of Indian scientists. English Wikipedia says the Kalam solid motors are named after A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, the Raman liquid engines after C. V. Raman and the Dhawan cryogenic engines after Satish Dhawan.

The engines and motors were tested in public steps. English Wikipedia records a 200-second endurance firing of the Dhawan-II cryogenic engine in April 2023; a static test of the Kalam-250, the second-stage motor of Vikram-1, at Sriharikota on 27 March 2024; the first static test of the Kalam-1200 first-stage motor there on 8 August 2025; and, in February 2026, a 145-second firing of Dhawan-III on a mobile test stand the company built itself. Skyroot’s own timeline adds that in 2024 it fired what it calls India’s then largest private rocket stage, and that in 2025 it validated the pneumatic separation system for the Vikram-1 payload fairing.

The next vehicle is Vikram-2. Skyroot’s website describes it as a rocket powered by a cryogenic engine with a larger payload, and lists it as “launching 2027”; that is the company’s own target date.

Design and documentation.

Launch companies sell something few customers ever see up close, so their public image is built almost entirely from pictures and broadcasts. The familiar set is a rocket standing on its pad at dawn or under floodlights, the long-exposure streak of an ascent across a night sky, and the plume photographed from miles down the coast. Engine test stands supply a second genre: a horizontal or downward jet of fire, usually shot from a safe distance, which stands in for years of engineering that is otherwise invisible.

Factories are shown the other way round. Clean white halls, rows of tank sections, workers in coveralls and cleanroom suits suggest order and repetition rather than drama. Many launches are also accompanied by a mission patch, a small embroidered emblem in the tradition of NASA crew patches, which turns a single flight into something that can be collected and worn.

The countdown livestream has become a format in its own right, with hosts, telemetry overlays and replays of the booster or upper stage. Not every company has worked this way: in April 2016 Inverse described one maker that gave a day’s notice of its flights and published an edited highlights video afterwards, with no live webcast. Coverage now often runs alongside posts from executives on social media, which journalists quote in their reports.

The industry also meets in person. The Space Symposium in Colorado Springs and the International Astronautical Congress, which moves to a different host city each year, are where companies unveil models, sign agreements and show their identities on stands and banners. This guide looks at what can be checked about each company: who founded it, who owns it, what it has flown, and what it says about itself.

“Opening Space for All.”

Skyroot builds in Hyderabad. English Wikipedia records that in October 2023 it opened MAX-Q, a facility next to the city’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, and that in November 2025 Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated its larger Infinity Campus, which the company plans to use to design, build, integrate and test launch vehicles. The company’s website calls MAX-Q its headquarters and says it has a team of more than 1,000 people. It also says it is certified to ISO 9001 and AS9100D, the aerospace quality standard; those are the company’s own statements.

The company’s website leads with “Opening Space for All” and a “Get to Orbit” button, describes Vikram-1 as an “on-demand launch vehicle” for small satellites, and repeats “Made in India” under each rocket. Its mission names carry meanings — Prarambh, “the beginning,” and Aagaman, “arrival” — and the rocket line carries a single name, Vikram, from the suborbital Vikram-S to the planned Vikram-2.

For a design guide, Skyroot Aerospace shows how a young launch company can build a brand from mission names, scientists’ names and one plain promise. Compare Rocket Lab, another small-satellite launcher, and Gilmour Space, the Gold Coast maker of the hybrid-propelled Eris rocket. For this guide we use a night indigo and a launch orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Skyroot Aerospace’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.