Hyderabad-based Spacetech start-up Skyroot has raised $51 million in a Series B funding round led by Singapore-based investment banking firm GIC, the company said in a release on Tuesday. The company claims that this is the largest funding round for any Indian spacetech start-up so far. 

With the new funding round, Mayank Rawat, managing director of GIC India Direct Investment Group, will be joining Skyroot’s Board. Launched in 2018, the start-up has been working to develop the first domestic privately developed space launch vehicles. The company currently has 200 employees, and the fresh funds will be utilized to expand Skyroot’s engineering team. Rothschild & Co India has been the financial advisor for this funding round. 

Pawan Kumar Chandana, Co-founder and CEO of Skyroot says, “We are proud to welcome one of the world's leading institutional investors as a long-term partner in our mission to ‘Open Space for All'. This round puts us on a trajectory of hypergrowth by funding all of our initial developmental launches, and enables building infrastructure to meet the high launch cadence required by our satellite customers.”

Meanwhile, with the new funding round Skyroot has also expanded its shareholder base by onboarding Mukesh Bansal, founder of Myntra and Cultfit, Anil Chalamalasetty and Mahesh Kolli, founders of Greenko Group, Solar Industries India Limited, Sherpalo Ventures and Neeraj Arora, former WhatsApp Global Business Chief, amongst others from the previous funding rounds.

The start-up raised $4.5 million in January in a bridge to Series B round led by Ram Shriram. He is an early Google investor and the founder of venture capital firm Sherpalo Ventures. The company raised $11 million in the Series-A funding round and $1.5 million in the seed round, last year.