INSIDE THE SECRETS THAT PROPELLED ISRO

Behind its obvious technological achievements, the space organization was able to build a great people culture

- T.N. Hari

Bengaluru: Sometime in 1975, when I was in the 5th grade, I overheard some senior students talking excitedly about the launch of India’s first satellite, Aryabhata, by a Russian rocket. Coming less than a year after the Pokhran-1 nuclear tests, this event triggered people’s imagination and hope in every Indian science buff.

And from then on, every few years, there would be a significant milestone that would make us all proud. And on 23 August, this year, when India became the fourth nation to land a spacecraft on the moon, the hearts of every Indian would swell with pride.

In the story of the people behind Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), the country’s space agency, lies the answer to what makes it the pre-eminent ‘make-in-India’ success story, and arguably the nation’s most admired and impactful startup.

When engineers from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) were busy making contributions to the American space programmes, Isro was being built by talented engineers from some of India’s relatively obscure colleges.

This is not a comment on the IITians’ lack of patriotism or anything of that sort but more about the depth of talent in the country and how the right kind of leadership and culture can bring the best out of anyone.

Isro’s constraints that made it impossible for the organization to match the salaries of multinationals in India or tech companies in the US, forced it to pick people who had hunger in the belly and a passion for technology. In the end, this strategy worked very well as results show.

The founder