ISRO and MEA to look for business opportunities in South East Asia Middle East Latin America and Africa
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is exploring opportunities for cooperation not just with established space powers like the United States, Japan, France, and Russia but also with developing nations.
Such partnerships with more recent global space industry entrants are carried out in coordination with the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and are intended to explore markets, according to Dr. Somanath, Chairman of ISRO.
The leaders of the space agencies for Mexico and India recently met to examine the prospect of India developing and launching a remote-sensing satellite for Mexico. Working with the Indian Foreign Ministry, the Indian Space Agency is taking this proposal under consideration.
Elaborating on this, Dr Somanath said, "Mexico does not have a big space ecosystem and they need our help. Once we develop our private space ecosystem here, we can explore markets there and build for them. Not just ISRO, but India's private firms can operate and carry out business in foreign nations with whom space sector collaboration has been unexplored".
In order to enable Indian private enterprises to build a satellite and supply it to Mexico, he continued, the Mexican government would collaborate with the Indian foreign ministry and convince Indian banks to extend loans.
Dr. Somanath remarked that India would like to investigate the markets in Latin America, Arab countries, Africa, and South East Asia and engage with them for mutual benefit when discussing the potential for India to conduct space sector business activities.
He brought up the possibility of Indian companies producing ground stations, satellites, and related hardware for other countries.
Indian commercial companies will be permitted to do end-to-end space activities starting in 2020, such as developing ground segments, producing rockets and satellites, and so forth.
Since then, a large number of businesses have developed and tested their own rocket engines. While satellite businesses have constructed their spacecraft and launched them on Indian and foreign rockets, private enterprises have also demonstrated their ability to build rockets, launch them into the upper atmosphere, and are aiming for space.