00:24:40 · Aditya Agarwal
[00:24:40] S1: Okay. So you get up with space. You're kind of, like, getting, like, you know, you're on a total spiritual journey. You're kind of, like, getting the oval effect. Your brain's bloated. Your your mind is kind of, like, you know, to deal with all of these things. So it's obviously a very new foreign environment across all of these different axes of the human experience. I'm also curious, like, when you go up there, do you feel an immense sense of responsibility? Like, is there some amount of nervousness? It's like, man, like, humanity shot me into space. Very few people have come all the way here. I gotta do these experiments that people told me to do. I better not screw it up. You know? Like, is there that loop kinda going through your head, or is there... Or are you kind of, like, pretty chill about the whole thing? Because you're like, listen. I made it. What are they gonna do? Take me back? I'm in space now.
00:25:35 · Shubhanshu Shukla
[00:25:35] S0: I think it personal is question, because it's not a trait of the, or the attribute of the journey itself, it is a personality based question, you know, how do you think or how do you feel? But the semantics of it, design of the question is, of course, there is responsibility. I understand that I am only the second Indian to go to space in forty one years. There is a huge responsibility. And being the one in a population of 1,400,000,000, the odds are immense. So, of course, there is a lot of responsibility, there is a lot of pressure, and if you let that pressure come on to you, it is crippling. You won't be able to do anything. It is going to make you anxious, it is going to make you nervous, and all these things. So, the way I deal with it is, I don't think about it. What do you have to do right now? What is the task at hand? What is the next experiment or what is the next activity? Go ahead and do that as best as you can. And I think most of the times if you do that, you would be very good at it because you have trained for it, you have prepared for it, you will do well. But if you let that overpower you, then it becomes very crippling. But there are moments, you know, it happens. So I... It was the second day or the third day that I was supposed to speak to the Prime Minister from space. And I changed into my flight suit because that was a uniform for the interaction, and I again floated down and I was crossing the module where the interaction was supposed to happen, and somebody had prepared that area, you know, the Indian flag was hung on the background. And I was just passing through and I heard on the radio, the radio check was being done and Hindi was being spoken for the first time on the ISS. And so, Hindi was being spoken and you saw the flag in the background and that was the moment, you know, it hit me suddenly. What is happening? And in those few minutes, you have to get back and just tell yourself that it's okay. This is just a normal conversation. I had to tell myself that 10 times, this is just a normal conversation. It is just speaking to a controller on ground, like something like that, so that you are able to do it normally. Otherwise, I wouldn't have said a word, just frozen there and imagining what is happening.
00:27:43 · Shubhanshu Shukla, Aditya Agarwal
But yes, that was one very powerful moment for me as well, that it just you know, kind of reminded me that what is happening. This is not real. This is just too rare for this to happen because this was the first time that both these things were happening. So I think that was one of those moments where I really felt it that this is a big deal. [00:28:02] S1: It's a pretty cool moment. [00:28:04] S0: Yes. It's pretty sweet. It was. [00:28:05] S1: Yeah. Just a normal conversation, man. [00:28:13] S0: I I I did have a sip of water.
00:28:19 · Aditya Agarwal
[00:28:19] S1: You know, we could... You know, we could probably talk all evening about, obviously, your experiences on the ISS and given how unique an experience it is. But perhaps now to switch gears about the future of kind of space, not just space travel, but kind of the space industry. We are going towards what is looking like it's going to be one of the... Say, not the largest IPO of all time. SpaceX is likely going to IPO before the end of the year. You don't have to believe Elon's projections of the TAM. It doesn't have to be $26,500,000,000,000, but it would... It is still going to be a a remarkable, I think, IPO. Right? But what I find more interesting than the IPO of, obviously, that iconic company in and of itself is actually how much ambition it has unlocked in the entire ecosystem of people wanting to build for space. So we were actually joking about this at South Park, you know, at SPC. Our his... You know, historically, we have done mostly kind of software investments. We have a we have a very heavy portfolio in AI and software. And when I say software, you know, kind of the classic categories, consumer, b to b, infrastructure, and so on. But a lot of our focus for the last, call it, eighteen to twenty four months has been on much more hard tech. So at this stage, we have actually got a company. We have a space gun company. We have a space kind of like docking company. We also have a space laser company. But a lot of the reason for this is I think that people now are starting to believe that the ecosystem of space can be developed successfully. And, obviously, the combination of having... Well, this is actually a symbiotic relationship. Being in space, but then also, like, orbital data centers, kind of the crazy power requirements of AI and so on. It's kind of an interesting symbiotic moment. But I'm curious, like, how are you thinking about what is likely going to be hopefully a Cambrian explosion of startups and activity in space over the next decade? Do you see it coming as well?
00:30:31 · Shubhanshu Shukla, Aditya Agarwal
[00:30:31] S0: Yeah. Absolutely. I think in some ways, I would say that the Cambrian explosion has already kind [00:30:36] S1: of I tend to agree. [00:30:37] S0: Yeah. Because five years back, you know, this was very limited, a handful of startups who were doing this and today you have almost 400 startups in India which are doing... [00:30:46] S1: Just in India, so yeah, exactly.
00:30:47 · Shubhanshu Shukla
[00:30:47] S0: So they're doing a really, really good job. And I agree, this is a change from what traditionally we have been doing. This is a tech based revolution that is happening right now, which is what I'm extremely excited about. I feel that space inherently is exciting. Whether it is a child or it is an adult, it doesn't matter. Just reading about space, just talking about space, it is that it just evokes those explorational tendencies of human race, which have always been there. So, is exciting. For the first time, people have started seeing the viability of using space for creating opportunities and creating businesses and creating tech, and I think that is what is happening very rapidly. I I met a few of those companies that you were talking about just before coming here, and, you know, young kids, you know, and they are doing this fantastic job, and they are making stuff which is actually going to be used. It is useful. Yeah. We just have to connect the use cases to the things that are being made right now. I am extremely excited about this sector, especially for globally also, it is already happening on a huge scale. But for India, am very excited because this is a shift from what we have been doing traditionally as a country, you know, where like a service based economy we have been talking about and most of the innovative startups which we always found, the big ones were always either Swiggy, Zomato or UberOla or India's, you know, versions of the equivalence of these things. But this is what excites me that we are actually making things and we are going to create tech and create this, not just the property that we are making, but also create this intellectual property in the bargain of doing this. So, am definitely very, very excited and I think the next ten years are going to be amazing for this country. Not just for this, because we have a necessity also. We have already said that we want to do a human space mission, which is Mission Gaganyaan, and then we have said that we want to make our own space station, which is the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, and then eventually landing somebody to the moon by 2040. To just make these things happen, the kind of innovation and the kind of technology development that we need to do is phenomenal. So I think that this is... There is a lot of space here for space in the next few years in India. Yeah.