TeamIndus & Rahul Narayan’s Lunar Dreams
TeamIndus, founded by Rahul Narayan and a team of engineers, emerged as one of India’s earliest private aerospace ventures with its sights set on the Moon. The team, which included ex-ISRO scientists and young engineers, built a lunar lander from scratch in a country with no private spaceflight ecosystem. The vehicle, later dubbed HHK1, was designed to ride aboard ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). Despite the Google Lunar XPRIZE’s cancellation in 2018, TeamIndus continued lunar ambitions post-contest, repositioning itself as a commercial lunar services company. The company helped create a precedent for Indian startups to build space-grade hardware, navigate policy hurdles, and dream at planetary scales.
- $20 million prize
- Bengaluru
- Commercial lunar services
- Funding
- Google Lunar XPRIZE
- HHK1 (Hum Honge Kamyaab One)
- High-definition images
- Indian space entrepreneurs
- ISRO Collaboration
- Lunar dreams
- Lunar lander
- Lunar technology
- Milestones
- Mission design
- Modular lander platforms
- Nandan Nilekani
- Payload integration
- Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV)
- Policy hurdles
- Private aerospace venture
- Private space technology
- Rahul Narayan
- Ratan Tata
- Sachin Bansal
- Scientific instruments
- Space Exploration
- Space-grade hardware
- spacecraft
- TeamIndus