India’s space launches have been renowned for achieving significant milestones on a shoestring budget. Take the 2013 Mars Orbital Mission, or Mangalyaan, which famously cost less than the budget of the film Gravity.
However, the economics have come under scrutiny after a 2026 Cambridge study estimated the country’s launch cost to low Earth orbit at $13,302 per kilogram. The comparable figure in the United States was $3,225 per kilogram in 2025.
But the numbers aren’t as straightforward as they seem. The study analysed more than 6,740 rocket launches from 1960 to 2025, measuring estimated recurring launch costs rather than customer prices or research and development expenditure.
It captures different rocket and payload mixes across countries, which can affect the cost per kilogram. Smaller payloads can push the calculated cost per kilogram higher because fixed launch costs are spread across less mass.
It also standardised costs to low Earth orbit and US dollar rates in 2024. The figures also represent estimated launch costs, rather than what customers ultimately pay. That makes the analysis a snapshot of launch economics, but it is less useful as a standalone measure of what an Indian customer would pay.
This gap raises a larger question for India’s emerging private launch industry. Is the country’s launch sector inherently expensive, or has it simply not reached the scale needed to make launches cheaper?
The Missing Ingredient is Repetition
Rocket economics change when launches become repeatable rather than occasional. The Cambridge research finds that doubling cumulative payload reduces average launch costs by 21.2%.
The US benefited from SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 and high launch frequency. The company conducted more than 165 Falcon 9 launches in 2025, according to the research.
India has not operated at anything close to that commercial cadence. The country’s commercial space program took off only in 2020 with the establishment of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), followed by the entry of the private ecosystem. This was further actuated by the launch of the executive Indian Space Policy in 2023 to regulate and open up the space sector.
For Chennai-based launch operator Agnikul Cosmos, cadence is central to the cost equation. “Low cadence is the real driver,” Co-founder and CEO Srinath Ravichandran tells AIM.
When launches are infrequent, companies cannot spread fixed costs across enough missions. They also have fewer opportunities to build manufacturing experience.
“Every expended stage today is also a cost that never gets recovered,” Ravichandran says. Agnikul is developing reusable hardware to change that equation. The company has also brought engine manufacturing in-house, compressing production from months to days.
However, it may be a stretch to read the Cambridge study as a permanent assessment of India’s launch economics.
“These statistics taken as a snapshot of time are only true to that time,” a high-level source working in an agency under the Department of Space tells AIM on the condition of anonymity.
The person argues that India’s commercial launch market is still in its early stages, making today’s cost structure a poor indicator of where it could settle as production scales.
The Cambridge researchers themselves draw a distinction between costs and prices. Their paper says future research needs demand-side analysis to estimate actual launch prices. That distinction matters when considering who ultimately bears launch costs.
Launch is Only One Cost
For satellite companies, the launch bill can be significant, though it’s not their largest expense.
Suhani Doshi, VP of Investment at Mela Ventures, says launch typically accounts for 10–20% of the upfront cost of a large constellation. For small satellites using rideshare, it is around 10–15%.
The larger expenses include satellite and payload development, engineering teams, ground infrastructure, data systems, insurance, and years of research and development. That changes how India’s launch cost gap should be read.
“What usually decides whether a company works is whether it can sell the data or service at a margin, not whether it saved some money per kilogram,” Doshi notes.
It also means cheaper launches alone will not automatically expand the Indian space industry.
“They would help, but launch cost on its own won’t unlock scale,” Doshi says. More frequent domestic launches could reduce the barrier to putting satellites into orbit. They could also make it easier for companies to replenish and expand constellations.
But satellite companies still need capital, hardware, ground infrastructure, and paying customers.
For Indian launch providers, meanwhile, demand creates another problem. Without enough customers, they cannot generate the flight rate needed to lower their own costs.
That creates a circular challenge where launches can only get cheaper with scale, but to scale, one needs demand to begin with. Funding and infrastructure can help companies build capacity, but they do not solve the demand problem.
For launch providers, the crucial metric is whether that capacity translates into enough paying missions to sustain a higher flight rate.
Building Circular Demand
The government is now building several pieces of the ecosystem needed to break that cycle. As of August 2026, India had around 440 registered space tech startups. IN-SPACe had granted 113 authorisations to 52 non-government entities.
NewSpace India Limited, the commercial arm of ISRO, also signed 118 technology transfer agreements covering 83 ISRO-developed technologies.
The government has introduced a ₹1,000 crore venture capital fund and a ₹500 crore Technology Adoption Fund to boost the commercial space sector. It has also enabled discounted access to ISRO facilities and is supporting common testing and manufacturing infrastructure.
But launch infrastructure remains a constraint.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology recently noted that India’s space transportation system still relies largely on two operational launch pads. The launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, is nearly three decades old, while the second pad for heavier launch vehicles, also at Sriharikota, has operated for more than two decades.
The Third Launch Pad at Sriharikota is expected to become operational by 2029–30, and a separate SSLV launch complex is also being developed at Kulasekarapattinam, Tamil Nadu.
Agnikul sees supply-chain structure as another cost driver. “Fragmentation is the biggest factor,” Ravichandran says. Separate vendors for manufacturing, testing, and integration can add cost and risk.
Agnikul keeps design, manufacturing, and testing together. It is also planning to introduce reusable hardware. But Mela Ventures points to something even more fundamental that can drive up demand.
“If we had to pick one, it would be stronger demand, particularly from government as an anchor customer,” Doshi says.
Such contracts can provide startups with revenue and credibility while helping them raise larger rounds. More importantly, they create the volume that can eventually bring launch costs down.
“The US cost curve was built on sustained demand, not the other way round,” she observes.
That may be the most important lesson in the $13,302 figure. India does have a launch cost gap. But the number alone does not explain the economics of India’s emerging space industry.
The country is still building its commercial launch market, manufacturing base, infrastructure, and customer pool. Private players now need to turn that into repeatable flights.
As the space agency source puts it, “What you have to read is trajectories, not snapshots.”
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