BAAS Technologies Banks ₹5 Crore to Build Reusable Rockets — and the Engines to Fly Them

When India''s private space industry comes up, two names dominate the conversation: Skyroot Aerospace, which is preparing the country''s first privately built orbital launch, and Agnikul Cosmos, with its 3D-printed engines. A far younger company now wants to earn a place in that sentence — and it is starting at the hardest part of the problem, where the physics leaves no room for shortcuts: rocket propulsion.

BAAS Technologies, founded in 2024 and registered in Nashik with operations in Pune, said this week that it had raised ₹5 crore in a pre-seed funding round led by Inflection Point Ventures (IPV), one of India''s largest angel investment platforms. The round also drew in SINE IIT Bombay — the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the technology-business incubator at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay — alongside a group of private angel investors.

For a company barely two years old, the raise is modest in size but pointed in intent. BAAS is not positioning itself as another satellite operator or data play. It is building launch vehicles, and, unusually, the engines that power them.

What BAAS is trying to build

BAAS describes its goal as developing reusable sub-orbital and orbital launch vehicles for research institutions and commercial space customers. The reusable framing matters: reusability is the lever that companies like SpaceX used to collapse the cost of reaching orbit, and it is now the design assumption every serious new launch entrant is expected to work toward.

The more distinctive choice is that BAAS designs and develops both its solid and liquid rocket propulsion systems in-house. Propulsion is the component most launch startups would prefer to buy rather than build, because it is expensive, slow to mature, and punishing to test. By keeping it internal, BAAS is betting that owning the engine — rather than depending on imported hardware or third-party suppliers — is the durable advantage in a market where India has repeatedly flagged its reliance on foreign propulsion technology as a strategic weakness.

A test stand in Pune

The clearest signal of that bet is physical. BAAS is setting up a 100-kilonewton Rocket Propulsion Testing Facility in Pune, spread across roughly 20,000 square feet. The site is designed to run static fire tests — the ground firings in which an engine is bolted down and ignited so its performance can be measured before anything flies — and to support engine validation, qualification and, eventually, commercialisation.

Test infrastructure is the quiet bottleneck of any rocketry programme. You cannot iterate on an engine you cannot fire, and access to test stands has historically been gated through government facilities. The opening of India''s space sector by IN-SPACe, the regulator and promoter for private space activity, has made it far easier for a company like BAAS to justify building its own. A dedicated propulsion stand also gives the startup something to sell beyond its own rockets: test capacity that other space and research outfits can pay to use.

The people behind it

BAAS was founded by a young team — Tanmay Kanmahale (chief executive), Prashant Patil (chief technology officer), Atharva Pingale (chief operating officer), Swayam Sonar (chief product officer) and Shriniwas Hase (director). According to the company, the founders have represented India at international rocketry competitions on multiple occasions and have used those outings to build relationships with aerospace universities and research institutions across North America, South America and Europe.

That background — competition rocketry maturing into a venture-backed company — mirrors a broader pattern in Indian deep tech, where student projects and campus incubators are increasingly the on-ramp into hardware businesses. SINE IIT Bombay''s presence on the cap table reinforces the point.

Where the money goes

BAAS says the pre-seed capital will fund research and development on its liquid and solid propulsion systems, the build-out of the Pune static-test facility and manufacturing infrastructure, the procurement of equipment and raw materials, hiring across engineering and operations, regulatory compliance, and its upcoming engine- and flight-testing milestones.

Those are the unglamorous line items of a propulsion company, and they are exactly the ones that determine whether a launch startup ever reaches a pad. The global space launch services market — which the company cites as growing from roughly USD 25.3 billion in 2026 to about USD 41.3 billion by 2030, a compound annual growth rate near 15.6% — is the tailwind BAAS is counting on. Whether it can convert a ₹5 crore pre-seed and a Pune test stand into fired engines is the question the next 18 months will answer.

Sources

• IPV leads pre-seed round in space-tech startup BAAS Technologies — Entrackr
• Space-tech firm BAAS Technologies bags INR 5 Cr pre-seed funding — Entrepreneur India
• Indian space-tech startup BAAS Technologies raises ₹5 Cr in pre-seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures — BIS Infotech
• Indian Space Tech Startup BAAS Technologies Raises ₹5 Cr in Pre-Seed Round — StartupTalky
• Indian spacetech startup BAAS Technologies raises Rs 5 crore from Inflection Point Ventures — Indian Startup News