SIDBI Venture Capital Ltd (SVCL) has announced the first close of its Antariksh Venture Capital Fund at $113.5 million. The milestone is powered by an anchor commitment from the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe), the government entity that oversees and enables private participation in the country’s space sector. Positioned as India’s largest spacetech focused investment vehicle, the fund is intended to accelerate the scale up of private space companies and deepen the country’s commercial space ecosystem.
Fund Structure and Investment Strategy
Antariksh Venture Capital Fund is registered as a Category II Alternative Investment Fund with a planned tenure of ten years, giving portfolio companies a longer runway in a capital intensive domain. The vehicle has a target corpus of $181 million, and will now look to secure additional commitments from domestic and international institutional investors, including sovereign backers, under a green shoe option. Its mandate covers both early stage and growth stage spacetech startups across launch systems, satellites and payloads, in space and ground segment services, earth observation platforms, communications, and downstream applications that convert space generated data into commercial or public services.
Catalyzing India’s Space Economy Goals
The launch of Antariksh VC Fund is framed as a core component of India’s plan to build a $44 billion space economy by 2033, a target that hinges on stronger private sector participation across the value chain. It builds on recent policy shifts that created IN-SPACe in 2020, opened key segments of the space program to non governmental actors, and established dedicated capital pools for deeptech and spacetech ventures. Government backed vehicles are being used to de risk early innovation and crowd in private capital into a sector that typically has long development cycles and higher technical risk.
SVCL’s Role and Track Record
Antariksh is the twelfth venture fund managed by SVCL, which operates as the investment management arm of the Small Industries Development Bank of India, the country’s principal lender to micro, small and medium enterprises. Founded in 1999, SVCL manages SEBI registered AIFs that invest in startups and SMEs across sectors, with a mandate that aligns venture investing with wider MSME development and industrial policy priorities. Over the years, its funds have backed category defining companies, including unicorn payments platform BillDesk and defense and aerospace technology firm Data Patterns, giving the manager experience in both financial technology and high complexity engineering businesses that are relevant for spacetech.
Market Context and Outlook
India’s spacetech ecosystem has been gaining momentum, with founders and investors increasingly focused on opportunities from launch and satellite manufacturing to in orbit servicing, navigation systems, microgravity experiments, and analytics driven applications on the ground. The Antariksh Venture Capital Fund is designed to provide patient, risk tolerant capital that can support these companies through long product cycles and regulatory hurdles, while also positioning them to compete globally as commercial demand for space based services expands. If SVCL succeeds in closing the full corpus and deploying it effectively, the fund could help shift India’s space story from primarily state led exploration to a more diversified landscape where private companies build scalable businesses on top of national space infrastructure.
By securing a first close with IN-SPACe as anchor, SVCL’s Antariksh Venture Capital Fund signals a decisive step in India’s attempt to institutionalize spacetech investing at scale. The structure, mandate, and public backed capital base position the fund as a central platform for channeling financing into launch providers, satellite manufacturers, in space services, and downstream data applications over the next decade. As additional investors come on board and the portfolio takes shape, the fund’s performance will be closely watched as a test case for how India can turn its scientific and engineering strengths in space into a commercially vibrant, globally competitive industry.