The journey of a space startup is rarely a linear path to the stars. More often, it is a test of endurance on the ground. For Dhruva Space, that journey spanned 13 years, defined by a pivotal shift from building a modest product company to envisioning a globally scalable space infrastructure. In this interview with Forbes India, co-founder and CEO Sanjay Nekkanti speaks about the evolution of the firm—from being rejected by 162 investors to securing a Rs 450 crore order book. He also speaks about the strategic decisions behind building high-stakes hardware, such as space-grade solar arrays and the P-Nu microsatellite platform, while navigating the complex expectations of the global space market. Edited excerpts…

Q. How has Dhruva Space pivoted from the initial investor pitch?

Thirteen years is a very long journey. But one thing I learnt is that if you must build anything foundational, which has a breakthrough technology, which is globally scalable and creates large impact, you can't do that without having strong perseverance. And every time I hit a roadblock, I would remind myself of exactly that. Initially, when we were talking to investors, we were trying to build a product company. And in one of the conversations with a potential investor, he asked me, ‘What you're trying to do is amazing. The vision is great. But nobody in India is going to believe that you'll be able to pull this off. You're asking for four crore. I'm going to give you 400 crore. What are you going to do with that?’ That actually changed the way I was looking at things, because I felt we were trying to solve a problem, but we were not looking at the scale. I needed to get a little more realistic. So, I started consulting for a few matured companies in this industry… I was trying to study those companies.

Q. And how did you answer the investor when he asked you........

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