This is post #36 of 2026 of This Week in Tech India – so you can stay informed about tech in India on a weekly basis. For free.

There’s been a lot of news from the world of spacetech in India this week. Both good and bad news. Makes me think – are we flying in the right direction?

As a discipline, spacetech is incredibly important today. In concept, spacetech is the reason we have things like climate and weather intelligence, world-wide communications, location services (GPS) and so on. Heck, even modern banking and digital transactions depend spacetech (more specifically, on space-based atomic clocks for precise global timing and synchronization).

That’s why, each country’s space agency is Government owned. In India, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has been a Government agency since it was incorporated till today. It operates under the direct purview of the Department of Space and is funded and managed entirely by the Government. And the ISRO has made significant strides, what with things like the lowest cost mission to Mars and so on, that Indians should be extremely proud of.

In the last two weeks, the spacetech world in India has been confusing.

Six years back, ISRO opened the sector to private companies. A couple of weeks ago, it was announced that launch vehicles (rockets, basically) will not be made by ISRO anymore, but by public and private sector undertakings. This week, nine associations representing thousands of ISRO employees write letter to the ISRO Chairman and Department of Space secretary V. Narayanan, seeking clarification on this and ISRO’s future role.

The ISRO has, in response, brushed off concerns about its future role, saying it will neither be privatized nor sidelined amid increasing private-sector participation. ISRO said it will keep its focus on advanced R&D, strategic missions, space science, and next-generation technologies, while private companies and public sector undertakings (PSUs) handle mature technologies and commercial production.

So why did I say the last two weeks have been confusing? Because if you take this announcement against the backdrop of advancements in private spacetech players, you’d raise your eyebrows.

India’s spacetech ecosystem has already grown from single digits in 2019 to 400+ startups in 2026, with players like Skyroot Aerospace and Pixxel expanding their capabilities. Some Indian space startup raised $100 million in funding round, backed by Google. The startup is called Pixxel which does satellites, earth intelligence software, and some other stuff for commercial and sovereign space missions.

The Department of Space aims to help grow India’s space economy from around $8.4 Bn to $44 Bn by 2033. That’s 7 years away. Big money anticipated, clearly.

Another reason this is more suspicious if you take what’s going on in the US with the spacetech company whose name starts with the word “Space” and ends with the letter “X”. It started only a few years ago, but sold a whole bunch of vaporware, made contracts with NASA (through lobbying with key Government figures, clearly), got defense contracts from the Government, sold overpriced satellite internet, and more. And Elon Musk became the richest man in the world (on paper) and still promises a whole bunch of crap like data centers in space.

So, applying the parallel to India, a few individuals may become very, very rich. On paper, atleast.

Almost coincidentally, Reliance confirmed reports that were doing the rounds for months – that Jio is planning a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation to rival SpaceX’s Starlink (which is still, STILL, waiting for approval to launch satellite internet in India). Jio aims to launch this constellation in 2028.

I guess we’ll watch how the spacetech industry in India evolves, especially how much money is involved. But let us speak out if we see something…. in the air. (sorry).

“Thu” Moment for AI-ready Data Centers in India

Two weeks ago, I was thrilled to read a report by the Hindu Business Line which stated that foreign investment towards AI-ready Data Centers in India is on the decline. But this week I realised what’s not reducing? Local investments in these data enters.

TCS HyperVault (the data center subsidiary that TCS established in October last year) will invest ₹70,000 Cr To Set Up AI Data Centre in Hyderabad. They have secured 264 acres to develop a 1 GW AI data centre campus in Hyderabad. The liquid-cooled (very loose definition of cooling) data centre campus promises to host compute workloads for frontier AI companies and hyperscalers, and promises thousands of direct and indirect jobs.

“HyperVault advances TCS’ infrastructure-to-intelligence strategy by bringing together AI-ready infrastructure with our cloud, engineering, enterprise transformation and AI capabilities,” said TCS managing director and CEO K Krithivasan. 
HyperVault has also partnered with AI big boy OpenAI to build the latter’s AI infrastructure in India.

Haiyooooo.

Headlines

• WhatsApp now has bill payments feature in India. This is powered by the Bharat Connect (BBPS) network, that includes electricity, gas, water, FASTag, insurance, credit card and loan repayments. Bill payments is rolling out gradually across India and will be available for all Android and iOS users over the coming weeks.
• Ola Electric has opened its first dealer-operated stores across seven states and is targeting a network of more than 500 dealerships over the next two quarters. And, Bengaluru-based electric two-wheeler startup Simple Energy has launched its first family escooter, the Simple Wave, at an introductory starting price of ₹1.10 Lakh (ex-showroom).
• Swiggy CREW has pivoted into a dedicated personal travel concierge platform available exclusively for paid subscribers and on an invite basis. After CREW launched in the broader lifestyle concierge category last year, Swiggy has doubled down on travel to fulfil the demand for end-to-end operational assistance.
• Uber is cutting around 200-250 jobs in India as part of a global restructuring that will eliminate nearly 3,300 roles. This is Uber India’s second layoff exercise in six months, after it cut around 80 jobs earlier this year.  The cuts are expected to primarily affect Uber’s technology and operations teams in India, with nearly half of its AI Solutions team reportedly impacted.
• Flipkart is testing a microdrama feed on its main app and is in talks with TTT, Pratilipi and other content creators to produce exclusive short-form shows, while also tapping Pinkvilla for content. Kinda like what Amazon has been doing for sometime now.
• Swiggy launches a 24×7 helpline for customers to report food safety concerns. It has also added a dedicated Food Safety option in the app’s Help section, which is supposed to make it easier to flag issues with orders.
• The Government has stalled Alipay+’s proposed linkage with UPI over national security, data-security, money-laundering, and cyberfraud concerns. The linkage could have opened Alipay+’s network of more than 150 Mn merchants to UPI users, but the platform’s Chinese origins have invited heightened scrutiny.
• PayTM launches an AI agent for enterprise customers. PhonePe partners with Visa for careless payments globally.
• US suspends green card filings from cognizant, suspecting fraud.
• The Government has launched its Cell Broadcast System for instant disaster alerting to citizens. Basically, if there’s a disaster coming, you’ll get a clear alert on your phone. For now, this will be used to alert citizens of disasters or emergency situations that may affect them immediately.
• The CBI has arrested 8 people in connection with a digital arrest scam to the tune of 42 crores. This was after searches at 89 locations across 20 states. The threat actors installed a malicious APK on mobile phones to read bank transactions, and then the threat actors kept the victims under digital arrest for months by posing as police officers. Btw, the 42 crores came from three victims.

And finally: The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said they have taken cognizance of reports alleging that paid ads on Meta’s platforms promote or facilitate access to CSAM. And the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights summoned Meta India’s head, probably for an explanation or warning. I won’t say more on this – but you can go back a few episodes of TWITI, see the one titled “Meta is Sick”. I mean it.

Globally, Meta launched its own AI agent called Muse. Yuck.

Recommended Buy of the Week

I know I’ve been recommending a lot of books lately, but here’s one more great recommendation – someone on BlueSky recommended to me Edward Snowden’s autobiography. Can’t wait to read it.