Shuks' Space Flight: 'A Leapfrog Moment For India'

'You can imagine for India what Shuks means not just to the billions of people in India but the entire Indian diaspora around the world.'

IMAGE: Assigned Ax-4 crew member Shubhanshu Shukla, dressed in a black flight suit, grey aviation helmet, and oxygen mask. Photographs: Kind courtesy Axiom Space

Tejpaul Bhatia, CEO of Axiom Space, speaks to Rediff US Special Correspondent Abhijit J Masih on the AX-4 mission -- set to launch Indian astronaut Group Captain Subhanshu 'Shuks' Shukla and three crewmates to the International Space Station on June 10.

For him, this mission isn't just business -- it's the culmination of a lifelong obsession, now fueling a new era of access to space.

Part one of a two-part interview:

Could you tell me a little about your family's background in India and growing up years in the US?

My parents are from India, originally Punjabi.

My father moved to the US in 1970, finished his schooling at Cooper Union in New York and then became an electrical engineer.

My mother studied at the Bangalore Medical College and then moved here in 1973. My sister and I were born in New York City.

I went to school at Columbia University focused on computer science specifically around streaming media over the Internet.

That got my career shift into technology and entertainment primarily around sports. I worked at ESPN for a very long time and then got my interest in technology and startups and I did three startups.

I spent a little time at Citibank, particularly Citi Ventures, as an entrepreneur in residence.

That's when I actually met Axiom for the first time. They were pitching their deal to us at Citi and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I stayed in touch with them. I went over to Google for four years representing Google and Alphabet out to the startup community leveraging on my background as a startup founder and representing Google and Alphabet out to the Fortune 100 and the government public sector audience.

That's the time I ended up making an investment in Axiom, they hired me as Chief Revenue Officer and then promoting me to CEO.

You've been with Axiom for some time now. What excites you most about the future of space innovation? Is there a particular problem or opportunity that drives you?

That's a very good question. I want to be very specific about it. So I've been at Axiom for just under four years, July 3rd will be four years, and I've been dreaming about this since I was three years old.

I thought everybody thought about space this much. I just thought it was normal. My daydreams, my hobbies, my rabbit holes on the Internet were always about space.

When I came to this job, if I had written a movie script about what I expected four years later, I think I would have been only 10% accurate.

It is that much more amazing. Of course, my movie script would have had me going into space as opposed to me sending 14 other people to space.

But that's the key opportunity. It's not so much about the ability for a private company, a startup to send 14 people on four missions with four seats on it, that in just three years a startup can do this.

It's very exciting and personal for me especially about this mission. This is India's first astronaut and citizen to go to the ISS, same with Poland and Hungary.

And they're going with the US, with Axiom and with Dr Peggy Whitson who is a hero, a Hall of Famer and a record holder astronaut.

To answer your question, what excites me -- it's not a problem, it's an opportunity, it's the timing. I've been dreaming about this my whole life and then the last three years actually constructing that industry.

Not just investing my money and my energy, but also my time. I could be at Google, I could be working on AI, doing all the hot stuff that everyone else is doing.

But I know that this is the time and 2030 will be the iPhone moment for space. That's when this is going to flip and we're not just ahead of it we're creating it.

IMAGE: Ax-4 Mission crew members: Mission Pilot Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla of India with Commander Peggy Whitson of the USA, Mission Specialist Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of ESA/Poland and Mission Specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary.

You mentioned how the AX4 mission is important for India. Can you share a little bit about the mission and its primary goals?

So the primary goals of all these missions usually fit within two buckets.

There's what the astronauts are doing when they're up there which is a significant amount of hard science and research for their nations and also on a global level. The other is outreach.

So there's a significant amount of communication that's happening from the astronauts to the world but also to their individual nations as well.

And you can imagine for India what Shuks -- his call sign -- means not just to the billions of people in India but the entire Indian diaspora around the world.

It's the two largest democracies where things can get very hard but we willed it to happen.

There was this opportunity, through a commercial partner like Axiom, for India to have its astronaut on, I'm not going to say the world stage, but the universal stage.

It's an unbelievable series of events for India and space. The vision that's been painted is not a story, its reality.

IMAGE: Shubhanshu Shukla and Slawosz Uznański, review a procedure checklist card during training within the ISS Harmony mockup. Photograph: Kind courtesy Axiom Space

What are the key benefits that you think India can take away from this other than, of course, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla being part of the crew?

I'll give you two answers for that. One is maybe inward for India and the second is outward for India. I'll start with the second one because I actually think that's more important right now.

India's leadership is global leadership not regional leadership. This is a public-private partnership like the world has never seen.

India, in everything, is accomplished as a space programme and is a symbol and a model for the rest of the world.

It's a model of a space superpower and I'm including the major agencies and space legacy countries that have been involved since the 1950s and 1960s.

So India has a really important role here for leadership on the global stage.

The inward part is: If you look at what India has done in space and what it will do in human space flight is the most attention grabbing and it's incredible.

Their hero is going up with other heroes and children 30, 40 years from now will be telling stories like I'm telling you because of this moment.

What India does with that is extremely important.

That inspiration will be there, an excitement will be there and how does this become another leapfrog moment for India like the Internet.

IMAGE: Tejpaul Bhatia, CEO, Axiom Space.

You spoke about the new space industry, what are your thoughts about India's emerging private space sector?

Pleasantly surprised. There's pride to see an Indian start up space ecosystem. There is a little bit of healthy competition as well.

Sure, you guys build your startups but then bring them here and we'll fund them and grow.

Like the last 40 years of startups in the US, there's a lot of the Indian diaspora that works in that, so there is again a little bit of that ancestral pride to see in it.

But startups are a global thing and we're all playing in this game and I just want to see winners.

What was very impressive for me is when I went to India a year-and-a-half ago exploring this mission and how quickly we were able to get all these moving parts together, to get this mission together.

When I went to India, just like with any country I go to, I have two approaches to how I get deals done.

One is what I call ecosystem management. Just understanding who the pillars the nodes are and what currency is valued and traded in that ecosystem.

Sometimes the currency is actually money and sometimes its information and sometimes its trust.

The second is creating a strategic narrative. So we've done this in every country that we've done business with.

So what's it going to be in India? I immersed myself immediately in the areas where I'm the most connected.

So in India that was the venture community. I called a bunch of my buddies in California and New York and said hey I'm going to India who should I meet? So it was a series of VC meetings with brand names that you've heard that have US-India presence and have funds that focus just on India.

It is interesting to see in India that foreign investment is coming in and in an area that is critical infrastructure.

I was seeing a modernisation approach to the space startup sector that you don't see in other countries including the US.

This is the tipping point for sure when you look at India.