EtherealX, a startup in the building of next-gen space launch vehicles, has raised USD 5 million in a seed funding round. The round was led by YourNest and saw participation from BIG Global Investments JSC, BlueHill Capital, Campus Fund, and Golden Sparrow Ventures, Karan Bhagat & Yatin Shah from IIFL Wealth, Kiran Shetty, and Akhilesh Agarwal. Through this seed fund, EtherealX plans to develop the engines for their fully reusable medium-lift launch vehicle.
In June, YourNest Venture Capital announced its first investment in the SpaceTech vertical with a funding of USD 1.5 mn as part of the USD 5 mn round raised recently by Ethereal Exploration Guild, a Bangalore-based launch vehicle company building the world's first fully reusable medium-lift launch vehicle.
EtherealX aims to solve this problem with a new fully reusable medium-lift vehicle, offering absolute reusability to help reduce transportation costs and cut launch timeframes. Unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which provides partial reusability by bringing its booster back to Earth after successful launches, EtherealX is designing its vehicles to get both the upper stage and booster back.
Commenting on the funding, Manu J. Nair, CEO, said, “The funds from this round will be utilised towards the completion of our test facility, final tests and qualification of the 40kN engine for the upper stage, and for the manufacturing of the 925kN semi-cryogenic engine.”
Ranjeet Shetye, Venture Partner at YourNest, affirmed that “In our continued commitment to India’s DeepTech startup ecosystem, we are unanimous that EtherealX represents the focussed convergence of all the values that we seek in daring founders who challenge the status quo. Their individual experiences feed into their unified zeal, and their trail-blazing structural technology makes EtherealX the company that will jumpstart humanity’s expansion into deep space.”
Preetinder S Panjrath, CFO of BIG Capital commented “We are delighted to join EtherealX in its vision to make space exploration and transportation more cost-effective and scalable. We are big believers in Indian Space companies’ ability to challenge their Western counterparts by delivering better solutions at a fraction of their cost. Having backed several successful space ventures globally, we envision EtherealX will transform the space transportation industry with its launch vehicles that can turn around in hours for their next mission enabling advancement in verticals from agriculture to space mining and outer space.”
Established in 2022 by a team of engineers and scientists who previously worked with India's space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Manu J. Nair (CEO), Shubhayu Sardar (COO), and aerospace engineer Prashant Sharma (CTO) in Bengaluru, this with its medium-lift vehicle, Razor Crest Mk-1. Designed for full reusability, the vehicle is capable of launching 8 tons into the lower Earth orbit. It can also carry payloads of over 24.8 tons into the lower Earth orbit in a disposable configuration and 22.8 tons in a partially reusable configuration. Additionally, it is designed to deliver payloads into geostationary transfer and trans-lunar injection orbits.
