Recently, I had the chance to sit down and chat with ResearchSat’s founder/CEO RaviTeja Duggineni and their head of investor relations, Rahul Kundnani. ResearchSat is a South Australia-based company focused on facilitating scientific research in space microgravity to achieve groundbreaking discoveries that Earth’s gravity doesn’t allow for. This interview was a long time coming – when Rahul first contacted me, I was in Montenegro, giving myself a well-deserved break. I am incredibly honoured to have this interview-turned-article be one of my first works since getting back to Melbourne. Hopefully, you find this piece just as informative and entertaining to read as I did to write.
The Interview
What are your roles within ResearchSat?
RD: I’m the founder and CEO of ResearchSat. I look after the business and day-to-day activities, including sales and investment oversight.
RK: I primarily work on the business development and investor relations side.
What are your backgrounds?
RD: The other founders and I started ResearchSat out of our master of aerospace project, where we developed a micro-habitat. Since we were unable to find any partners in the APAC region to further our work in this area, we decided to take it upon ourselves to develop a platform that allows research to be done in space.
RK: I have a background in financial analysis with experience in raising funds for listed companies. I was part of the investment team a while back, I’m more on the funding and finance side of things. I met Ravi and the team last year when I was looking for a project to work on in Australia, and I was interested in ResearchSat since they were the first in the APAC region to do a mission sending a payload with a biotech experiment.
What made you so interested in space when you were starting out?
RD: I did my bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical engineering. I’ve always wanted to make things to fly. I came to Australia for my master’s with the motivation of developing a satellite, which eventually grew to an interest of researching microgravity.
What projects are you currently working on?
RD: We are now working on a space bioreactor to develop our own experiments in space. Also, researchers come to us with their unique requirements, and we build the satellite for them so they can run their experiments through our platform.
Ravi showed me a video I’ve included below to better explain what they have been working on, and how their projects operate:
Why work on double emulsions in space rather than on Earth?
RD: In space, the fluid dynamics behave differently compared to on Earth. To put it in pure physics, the sheer stresses and surface tensions in space allow particles to behave like a jelly, allowing us to create emulsions with liquids that differ in viscosity. We can increase the emulsion size in space without worrying about it collapsing under gravity. Also, we can synthesise pure mono-compounds.
What have the challenges been for ResearchSat so far?
RD: We operate in a very niche market and have had to create our own opportunities. Our main challenge has been educating our clients about our capabilities. We believe that the next decade will be significant for space science, and we are one crucial technology and mission away from growth.
Is this something you have planned for the near future?
RD: Over the next decade, we will undertake multiple space missions, including those focused on production and manufacturing. Our objective is to synthesize 1 kilogram of product in space using ingredients transported from Earth and then return the product to Earth. Successfully achieving this with a kilogram will provide proof of concept for scaling up to larger quantities, such as a ton. Ultimately, considerations regarding cost and market demand will govern the feasibility of these operations.
Where is the investment interest coming from at the moment?
RD: Mainly private support currently, it has been a challenge for us to get in touch with the right people from the public sector. It is not for just the space industry, but for other industries to see the benefit of doing their experiments using our platform. This market is very novel in the APAC region but has momentum in Europe and the US.
Where do you see the space biotech industry 5-10 years from now?
RD: There will be products produced in space not only for research but for commercialisation, too. There are other companies right now developing fibre optics and contact lenses in space, both with higher quality capacity than on Earth. We are seeing more free access and cheaper access to space right now, allowing for the opportunity of mass production of technology.
What would you say to young people wanting to enter the space biotech industry?
RD: Beyond research, there is a significant need for education. For instance, what makes space biology unique? Understanding the unique aspects of space biology is essential. Industry and government should actively support the next generation in advancing this field, particularly as they will increasingly encounter artificial intelligence, quantum technology, and space-related developments.
Do you have any exciting partnerships and collaborations you want to mention?
RD: We are not only looking at biopharma, but some enquiries are also coming from nanomaterial industries. Universities are interested and providing us with projects from students’ research and missions. We get to teach them what we learn, and we get to acquire data to enhance future missions.
Is there anything that you’re working on at the moment that you want the people to know about?
RD: The short answer is the space bioreactor; we would love to have universities and the industry collaborate and contribute to its development so that eventually we can produce the 1 kilogram of synthesised product in space. This would lead to products that could save many lives.
Finally, what is your favourite planet?
RD: Earth!
RK: Mars, that’s where we could go next.
I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk to RaviTeja and Rahul. I found their insights into the burgeoning industry to be incredibly interesting, and made me very excited to see what their plans for the future were. If you want to get in touch with these two experts, or you have any questions otherwise, do not hesitate to contact me via LinkedIn.