Chennai-headquartered space technology start-up Agnikul Cosmos on Wednesday said the Indian government has awarded it a patent for the design and manufacture of a single-piece rocket engine.
The Agnilet, one such single piece engine, is the world’s first single-piece 3D printed rocket engine completely designed and manufactured in India. It was successfully tested in early 2021. The Agilet is designed to be all contained in a single piece of hardware and has zero assembled parts. Agnikul displayed this engine at IAC 2021, Dubai, the most prestigious space technology gathering in the world.
Srinath Ravichandran, Co-Founder and CEO, Agnikul said: “Rocket engines typically consist of thousands of parts. Designing the Agnilet as a single piece of hardware hasn’t been easy, but our team made it happen. The patent is a testament to world-class design-in-India and made-in-India deep tech engineering,” he said.
Founded in 2017 by Srinath Ravichandran, Moin SPM and Professor SR Chakraborty at IIT Madras, Agnikul is on a mission to make space accessible and affordable. Incubated at IIT Madras, the start-up became the first Indian entity to sign an agreement with the Indian Space Research Organization in December 2020 under the IN-SPACe initiative. The agreement helps Agnikul access ISRO’s expertise and facilities to test its systems.
So far, Agnikul has raised ₹105 crore ($15 million) since 2019 from Mayfield India, Pai Ventures, Special Invest and many others, including prominent angel investors such as Anand Mahindra and Naval Ravikant.