Telangana to come up with space tech policy

HYDERABAD: Leveraging the Central government’s decision to allow private players to enter the space sector, the Telangana government is going to come up with a space tech policy to facilitate investments in this sector. 

Recently, the government held a stakeholders conference in this regard. An official said, “Space tech is a highly regulated area. However, since the Centre has come up with two policies (Space Policy and Remote Sensing Data Policy) and launched two institutes to help the private players in this sector, we decided that Telangana too should also have its State-specific policy.”

Hyderabad-based Dhruva Space, which was a co-winner in the Space category in the National Startup Awards, was one of the space startups that participated in the conference.

The startup requested the government to look into providing land parcels to the space sector, establish common sharing facilities and help in funding by providing collateral-free loans.

Kranthi Chand, lead of special projects in Dhruva Space, said, “We requested the government to provide land banks, similar to how it has been provided for the aerospace sector, so that we can set up our manufacturing units in and on the outskirts of the city. We also requested for common sharing facilities and funding in the form of collateral-free loans from State-owned cooperative banks against purchase orders.” 

Apart from this, Chand also requested the State government to look into the issue of reimbursement of State GST while formulating their policy.

He said the existing industrial policies of the State government had helped the startup grow, but emphasised that a separate policy for space would help the sector grow further.