A Hyderabad garage-to-orbit story just wrote a new chapter for Indian private space. TakeMe2Space's PowerBank-50 satellite battery pack has become the first Indian-made satellite power system to earn 'flight heritage' — the aerospace industry's gold standard for hardware that has survived a real mission in the vacuum of space — after flying aboard Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 rocket.

BRS working president K. T. Rama Rao welcomed the milestone on 1 August 2026, congratulating TakeMe2Space founder Ronak Samantray and the team, and noting with particular pride that the startup 'took its initial shape at T-Works Hyderabad, India's largest prototyping facility.'

From T-Works bench to orbital mission

T-Works, a Telangana government-backed prototyping hub in Hyderabad, was where Samantray first assembled the hardware concepts that would eventually power a satellite in orbit. The facility is designed precisely for this pipeline — giving hardware startups access to industrial-grade machinery before they have the capital to build their own factories. TakeMe2Space is now among the clearest proof-points that the model works.

'Flight heritage' matters enormously in the satellite supply chain. Without it, even technically sound hardware struggles to win contracts — satellite operators are notoriously risk-averse when it comes to unproven components flying on missions worth tens of millions of dollars. Clearing that bar on the Vikram-1 mission opens commercial doors that were previously shut.

Skyroot's Vikram-1 and India's private launch ecosystem

Skyroot Aerospace, the Hyderabad-based launch vehicle developer, has been building the Vikram rocket series as part of India's rapidly expanding private launch market. The company's missions have served as a proving ground not just for its own rockets but for the broader ecosystem of Indian space hardware startups seeking their first real-world validation. TakeMe2Space's PowerBank-50 is the latest — and most visible — beneficiary of that role.

India's 2020 space sector reforms, which opened satellite manufacturing and launch services to private players through the IN-SPACe framework, created the regulatory runway for exactly this kind of milestone. State-level infrastructure like T-Works and national-level policy via IN-SPACe are now visibly feeding into real orbital missions — not just roadmaps and press releases.

What the PowerBank-50 milestone signals

Satellite battery packs are a critical subsystem — they store solar energy and power the spacecraft during eclipse periods when solar panels go dark. An Indian-made solution with verified flight heritage means domestic satellite builders no longer need to depend entirely on imported power systems, a meaningful step toward the supply-chain self-reliance that Indian space policy has been targeting.

With Skyroot planning follow-on Vikram missions and T-Works-incubated startups maturing across satellite subsystems, the PowerBank-50's success is less a finish line than a launchpad — for TakeMe2Space, and for the cluster of deep-tech hardware companies Hyderabad is quietly building around it.