While other nations have growing in-space refueling industries, India is so far lagging behind. Naresh Kannan is working to change that.
Kannan leads the business development team at OrbitAID Aerospace, an Indian RPO startup. The company is working towards launching a demo mission in 2027, seeking to become one of the small number of nations that have successfully refueled spacecraft in orbit.
“My primary goal was to build the credibility of this domain in India,” he said. “Everyone was thinking, ‘This is a little bit too far-fetched.’”
Origin story: Kannan earned a master’s degree in space-exploration systems from the University of Leicester in the UK—what he calls his “first real exposure to how ambitious, technically demanding, and genuinely nuanced this industry is.”
After spending time working on a LIDAR project for a research team in Germany, and as a space policy research assistant for an Indian think tank, Kannan joined OrbitAID with the goal of merging his love of solving both technical and policy challenges.
“If I’m talking to a customer, I don’t need an engineer on the first call. If I’m talking to a regulator, I don’t need to bring in the policy person,” he said. “Having this background, I can do my job easier.”
Many hats: While Kannan’s business card may say ‘business development,’ his job covers a diverse set of responsibilities, including leading both the marketing and regulatory teams.
He’s also helping the company grow its customer base outside of India, with plans to expand to Europe first.
James Shin, K2 Space
“As I begin to understand how much [impact]…things like cellular telecommunications, imaging, climate [research]…have globally—once I started to understand that, I was like, ‘Okay, this is definitely the industry that I want to work in,’” Shin told Payload.
Robert Ihnatisin, Orbital Matter
As an expert in 3D printing for terrestrial applications, Robert Ihnatisin was surprised by how slow the in-orbit manufacturing industry was progressing. So, naturally, he started a company to solve the problem himself.
Patrick Miga, Advanced Space
In first grade, Patrick Miga saw a photo of Neptune (snapped by the Voyager 2 spacecraft).. Ever since then, his life has been directed toward space.
Muhammad Hunain, Melagen Labs
“That’s where I realized we’re stuck at a 1980s standard: still shielding spacecraft with aluminum, and rad-hardened electronics [were] too expensive to build at the scale this economy demands,” Hunain told Payload.
Dallas-based Balerion Space Ventures has surpassed its $200M target for its second fund, the firm announced Thursday. Fund II—which remains open—is more than five times the size of the firm’s debut fund, which came in at just under $40M.
Balerion had closed ~$90M as of May, according to Venture Capital Journal. Cofounder and General Partner Daniel Kleinmann chalked up the momentum since then to portfolio companies hitting milestones and raising up-rounds—which he said resonated with LPs.
The firm is also holding back capital for follow-on rounds. “These are really capital-intensive businesses,” Kleinmann told Payload. “Having the ability to reserve capital to continue supporting these businesses as they hit major technical, commercial, government milestones is really important to us.”
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