As the country celebrates the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, T-shirts to coffee mugs to scaled models of rockets sporting the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) logo are flying off the virtual shelves of several D2C companies that are the official merchandise partners of the space research organisation.
“We have had record sales the last few days and it peaked on August 23,” says Bhavik Vora, founder and CEO of Black White Orange Brands, a brand licensing startup which sells licensed ISRO merchandise through its A47.in virtual store besides Amazon and Ajio. “In the last two days our sales have jumped almost 10 times of what we do in a single day.”
While the numbers are still small, it sold merchandise worth around Rs 2.4 crore in the first year of operations in 2021. Last year, it increased by 40%. It expects a 400% jump in sales this year buoyed by the landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the moon.
The Tee Point, another startup incubated at IIM Kashipur in 2021, is celebrating the enthusiasm for ISRO merchandise with the launch of products with new Chandrayaan-3 designs and is projecting 10x increase in Isro product sales, says founder Prachi Wadhwani. “Building on the success of the last couple of years, we’re aiming for substantial growth in both B2C and B2B2C segments, having served over 1,000 customers so far.”
In the last one week it has sold Rs 50,000 worth of goods offline and online combined.
Since 2021, when ISRO roped in nine licensees to produce branded merchandise — comprising clothing items, coffee mugs, stationary, backpacks, toys, DIY rocket kits, scaled rocket models, collectibles — the number of partners has grown to 19.
“When we started, there was a higher recall for NASA branded products but we are seeing the tide changing. Against NASA’s branded merchandise sales of $2 billion a year (globally), ours is minuscule but there is a newfound interest for products connected to Indian institutions of repute,” says Sunil Jalihal, founder CEO of Indic Inspirations, a Pune based startup which lists ISRO-inspired products such as scaled GSLV and PSLV rocket models, Gaganyaan and Mangalyaan models besides the ubiquitous keychains, board games, collectibles and sweatshirts. “We have more than 1,000 products of which around 100 are ISRO-licensed. We have sold ISRO-related products worth Rs 1 crore in the last 18 months and are now looking at sales of Rs4-5 crore this year.”
Jiggy George, founder & CEO, Dream Theatre India, and a brand licensing specialist, says one of the biggest challenges in licensing is the folk who put out what they deem as “fan art” without legitimate rights. “In this context, it’s great to see such a well-designed and officially licensed offering,” he says. “Just like people from the US wear NASA merchandise proudly, there is no reason why ISRO-licensed products should not be a round-the-year possibility for Indians.”
Target customers for these D2C brands are space enthusiasts, engineers, students, and schools. Strategic partnerships, collaborations with space education influencers, and limited and exclusive edition drops and launches have all fuelled demand for such merchandise. The Tee Point, for instance, plans to launch an augmented reality filter that will allow customers to capture the essence of animation directly from the ISRO merchandise using their smartphones.