For Pawan Kumar Chandana, one line from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s IIT Delhi speech felt a little too familiar.While addressing students at IIT Delhi’s 57th convocation, Modi spoke about the achievements of young Indians and said that somewhere in the country, a young engineer was proudly saying, “First in my bloodline to build a rocket.”Chandana, co-founder of Skyroot Aerospace, quickly picked up on the line.Sharing the clip on X, he wrote, “First in my bloodline to build a rocket. Thanks for the mention, Narendra Modi ji.”The post soon filled up with congratulatory messages, with people praising Chandana and the team behind Skyroot.Modi was speaking at the convocation on Saturday, August 8, where more than 3,000 students received their degrees. His speech touched on the growing number of young Indians working in fields such as space, semiconductors and drones.But the “first in my bloodline” line was the one that really stood out online.And for Chandana, there was an obvious reason.Chandana’s Journey From ISRO To Private RocketsBefore starting Skyroot, Chandana worked at ISRO.An IIT Kharagpur graduate with a dual BTech-MTech degree in Mechanical Engineering, he joined the space agency in 2012 and worked on India’s space programmes.Then, in 2018, he decided to take a very different path.Along with fellow former ISRO engineer Naga Bharath Daka, Chandana founded Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace. The two wanted to build rockets for India’s emerging private space sector.It wasn’t exactly a small ambition.Skyroot’s first major breakthrough came in 2022, when it launched Vikram-S, which became India’s first privately developed suborbital rocket.The company later took another big step with Vikram-1.On July 18, the rocket successfully reached orbit after launching from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. It was a major milestone for Skyroot and for India’s private space industry.So when Modi talked about young engineers doing things no one in their families had done before, Chandana clearly had a personal connection to it.His reply was short.But the story behind those few words – from an ISRO engineer to helping build a private Indian rocket company – is anything but small.
