team Indus in Google Lunar Mission

Last year we reported that how a startup from Bangalore - Team Indus has successfully chosen for Google space mission, now the latest update is that Team Indus has been successful in making India proud by becoming the first private enterprise that will land a robot on the moon. The Bengaluru based Startup has also won $1 million in prize for competing with some world class companies and completing an intermediate milestone.

Founded by Indranil Chakraborty, Rahul Narayan and Julius Amrit, Team Indus is one of the five lucky teams in the $30 million Google Lunar Xprize. The startup was successful in crossing a major milestone by developing a robot that is capable of landing on the moon and then travel five hundred meters on its surface and send back information to the Earth.

The Bengaluru startup has raised seed capital funding from a number of investors in the past. Some of the famous names are Sharad Sharama, the founding member of thinktank Ispirt, Shekhar Kirani and Subrata Mitra of Accel Partners and Vivek Raghavan, chief product manager of UIDAI.

According to Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned academic, “This is good news for India for sure, but it is a better news for mankind because it shows that governments no longer have a monopoly on space exploration.”

The Bengaluru based startup is battling it out with some of the top private funded companies from all around the word. The companies include Space-IL, an Israel based company backed by several top-notch Israeli institutions, Astrobotic, which is a spinoff from the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute and Moon Express.

Around 26 best teams from all around the world are competing in the Google Lunar Xprize. The mission is expected to cost a whopping $30 million, when it is complete. “I expect it will inspire Indian entrepreneurs to solve many big problems that the country has,” added Wadhwa.

Xprize was launched in India last month. It is an incentive driven competition that has an aim of bringing together problem solvers from all across the globe to take on big challenges head on. India is the first country for Xprize outside the United States of America. Industry veteran Ratan Tata, Paresh Ghelani of BPG Motors and Naven Jain of Inome are the famous names responsible for bringing Xprize to India.
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