Antrix Corporation, the commercial arm of India?s department of space, sees revenues surging 20% annually over the next few years on the back of a slew of space vehicle launches by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), a top official told FE. Bulk of the business would come from leasing transponders for broadcasting and telecommunication purposes.
Over the next three years, the space agency plans to launch between six and eight vehicles every year compared to two or three launches earlier.
Most launches would be dedicated for national missions but it would help Antrix in accommodating more commercial payloads in these launch vehicles, said K R Sridhara Murthi, managing director, Antrix Corporation.
?Antrix will have at its disposal greater transponder capacity as well as capability for imaging from space for commercial applications. Of course it is going to strengthen our launch business as well,? Murthi said. ?It could result in about 20% year-on-year growth for the coming years.?
Transponders are channels of a communications satellite through which data is transmitted. The leasing of transponders for the video and telecommunications sector accounted for 56% of Antrix?s total revenues stood at Rs 1,059 crore in 2008-09. Other products and services such as marketing of remote sensing data, satellite manufacturing and launch or ground system activities constituted 8%, 15% and 21% of revenues respectively, with revenue from export at Rs165 crore. The revenue figures for 2009-10 were not available yet, he said.
Around 200 transponders on the Insat series satellites provide services to state-run Doordarshan channels and various direct-to-home broadcasters such as Tata-Sky, Sun Direct and Bharti Airtel. Other applications of the Insat series include tele-medicine, tele-education, connecting village resource centres, search and rescue operations and disaster management support.
Meanwhile, Antrix plans to add another 60 transponders in the C and Ku bands later this year through two satellite launches. The satellites GSAT-5B and GSAT-8 would be launched by Arianespace, the European launch services company.
?Next year, we are trying to push another Ku band satellite for expanding DTH services,? Murthi said. In the launch business, Antrix?s order book currently includes 11 launches scheduled during the next two or three years while a few other contracts are in the pipeline, he said.
Last fiscal, the firm also grew its business of marketing data from remote sensing satellites to include countries such as Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Nepal. It currently has around 22 international ground stations for the remote sensing segment along with 20 resellers worldwide.
Set up in 1992, Antrix?s revenues crossed the Rs 1,000 crore-mark for the first time during 2008-09, Murthi said.