Pawan Kumar Chandana is the Co-Founder and CEO of Skyroot Aerospace, India's first space-tech unicorn and the country's pioneering private rocket manufacturer headquartered in Hyderabad.

Pawan earned a dual degree in Mechanical Engineering and Thermal Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, then spent six years as a scientist at ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, contributing to the GSLV Mk-III and SSLV programs and winning two innovation awards.

Named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2020 and India Today's Top 100 Young Achievers in 2022, Pawan is widely regarded as a visionary driving India's new space economy with a mission to make spaceflight as affordable and routine as air travel.

Under Pawan's leadership, Skyroot made history in November 2022 by launching Vikram-S, India's first privately developed suborbital rocket, and has since grown to a team of over 1,000 engineers building next-generation orbital launch vehicles.

Skyroot has raised $160 million in total funding from marquee investors including GIC and Temasek, crossed a $1.1 billion valuation in May 2026, and is preparing for its first orbital mission using the Vikram-I launch vehicle.