Abyom SpaceTech & Defence

6 Years of Abyom. 25 Orbits Around the Sun! Time flies. Sometimes I still wonder how a childhood dream of becoming an Astronaut and a fascination with the stars slowly turned into something much bigger than I had imagined. What started as pure curiosity became a stubborn idea. That idea became a profession. And that profession became Abyom SpaceTech & Defence. Today, as Abyom completes its 6th Foundation Year, I am also completing my 25th orbit around the Sun. Coincidentally, almost every new year of Abyom has been another year of my own life. Growing up in a small village in eastern Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh, I would often sleep on the roof, looking at the open sky, the Moon and the vastness of the Universe. I was fascinated by the question of what exists beyond what we can see. I grew up reading Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Einstein, Tesla and many others, wanting to understand physics and the universe more deeply. That shaped much of my curiosity. Then, at around 16, one question became a little more stubborn: Why can’t I build our own Reusable Rocket and go to space? It sounded unrealistic. The stubbornness stayed. During my school years in Kolkata, learning about Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Vikram Sarabhai and Homi J. Bhabha further shaped my ambition. Their work across Defence, Space, and Nuclear technology became a major inspiration. At 19, during my first year of college in Gorakhpur, I started Abyom. There was no ready-made ecosystem around me for rockets, investors, or resources. I was studying, building a company, searching for people and learning things I had never been taught. Then came ISRO, COVID, and Hyderabad in 2023. With the support of the government, institutions, and well-wishers, the journey moved from ideas towards real hardware. Engines. Testing infrastructure. Facilities. Failures. Iterations. Team building. Slowly, ideas that once existed only on paper became engineering systems. The last six years taught me more than any classroom could. We made mistakes. Took wrong decisions. Faced uncertainty, resource constraints and moments when stopping seemed easier. As a first-generation entrepreneur, you don't know what is waiting around the next corner. You learn, correct, adapt and keep moving. I am deeply grateful to our family, team, teachers, mentors, partners, investors, Government institutions, friends and every well-wisher who believed in this journey. Six years later, the dream has evolved; but the stubbornness hasn't. There is still a lot to prove. The first 3 years were about research and learning. The next 3 were about building hardware and proving what we could build. The next 3 are about flight-ready systems and expanding the vision across multiple core applications. Today, I don't feel like celebrating a destination. I feel grateful for the journey- for the little boy looking at the sky, the 16-year-old asking an impossible question, the 19-year-old starting a company without knowing what he was getting into, and every person who joined along the way. 25 orbits. 6 years of Abyom. A lot learned. A lot more to build. Still a long way to go. The journey continues...

Like many of us, I grew up reading about legendary scientists such as Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Kepler, Heisenberg, Röntgen, Ohm, Gauss, Kirchhoff, Otto Hahn, Hermann von Helmholtz, Joseph von Fraunhofer, and many others through our Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics textbooks. They weren't just names in books- they were the pioneers whose discoveries shaped modern science and engineering. Even before founding @AbyomSpaceTech & Defence, I was fascinated by the history of rockets. One story that always inspired me was that of Wernher von Braun. As a young man in the 1920s, he joined an amateur rocket club driven by a dream of space exploration. To pursue that dream, he later joined the German military, where his team developed the A-4 rocket (later known as the V-2), the world's first successful long-range ballistic rocket. Years later, he led NASA's Marshall Space Flight Centre, where his work on the Saturn V rocket made the Apollo 11 Moon landing possible. His journey reminds us how technology can evolve from conflict to enabling humanity's greatest achievements. Landing in Germany as part of the 1st Indo-German InnoXchange Program felt surreal. It wasn't just another international visit; it was an opportunity to walk the same land and soil that gave the world many of the scientific minds whose work we grew up studying. From Baden-Württemberg, Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, Bavaria, Stuttgart, and Frankfurt, every city reflected a strong culture of research, innovation, engineering, and technology. Visiting world-class universities, research centres, the automobile industry, and deep-tech organisations gave a deeper understanding of how Germany has built one of the world's strongest innovation ecosystems. Throughout the program, I had the opportunity to explore five strategic deep-tech sectors- Space, Defence, Quantum, Nuclear, and Energy- and see how research is transformed into real-world technologies through close collaboration between industry, academia, and government. This journey was not just about representing Abyom -it was an honour to represent India among a select delegation of startups. Sincere thanks to the Governments of India and Germany and to all the partner institutions that made this exchange possible. The dream that began with school textbooks and stories of rockets now feels one step closer to reality. @IndiaDST @DWIH_NewDelhi @SINEIITB @iitbombay @ANRFIndia @bitspilaniindia @Uni_Stuttgart @MercedesBenz @startupindia @DLR_de @DLR_en @meitystartuphub @DAADIndia

When I look at these engine firing visuals, I don’t just see fire, thrust, or Mach diamonds. I see years of persistence, uncertainty, and a team that kept moving forward despite the odds. A few years ago, this was just an idea - a vision to build reusable rocket technologies from India. Today, watching our BSE-II engine perform exactly as envisioned reflects the power of disciplined engineering, execution, and long-term conviction. Building in space and defence with limited resources is never easy. Every test and every setback has only strengthened our belief in what we are building. Proud of what Team @AbyomSpaceTech is building as we continue advancing indigenous reusable and dual-use technologies for civil and defence applications! #Abyom #ReusableRockets #DeepTech #SpaceTech #Defence @isro @DRDO_India @narendramodi @PMOIndia @DrJitendraSingh @naralokesh @OffDSB @PrinSciAdvGoI @KTRBRS @NITIAayog @karandi65 @rajesh_gokhale @SomanathSpeak @EduMinOfIndia @ANRFIndia @IndiaDST @tdbgoi @BharatInnov2026 @FortuneIndia @Analyticsindiam @startup__pedia @IndianTechGuide @thebetterindia @indstartupnews @RuntimeBRT @TOIIndiaNews @YourStoryCo @Inc42 @AbyomSpaceTech