COIMBATORE: Former Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chairman S Somanath on Friday said salaried jobs would not create wealth and appealed to engineering graduates to build enterprises, pointing to India’s fast-growing space startup ecosystem and the emergence of billion-dollar ventures as evidence that entrepreneurship is the “need of the hour.”Somanath was speaking as chief guest at PSG College of Technology’s convocation ceremony 2026, where the institution honoured 560 undergraduate and postgraduate students from the electrical and allied engineering programmes.Citing Skyroot Aerospace as a case study, Dr Somanath recalled working with one of its founders during his Isro tenure on the LVM3 launch vehicle. He said the engineer later resigned, started Skyroot Aerospace and built a company valued at about $1 billion, employing more than 1,000 people while developing rockets and satellites from Hyderabad. He referred to the firm’s recent milestone of assembling its first rocket in Sriharikota as it prepares for launch, calling it a marker of how India’s technology landscape was expanding beyond the national space agency.Somanath said a strong private ecosystem has taken shape outside Isro, noting that India now has roughly 300–400 space startups. He added that the broader startup base across sectors has grown to around 1.5 lakh companies nationwide, supported by venture capital and investors willing to fund high-technology ideas.Urging students to take calculated risks, he said those with ideas and the ability to collaborate could build products and services from their engineering experience. He argued that graduates should consider moving from employment to entrepreneurship during their careers, stating that large-scale entrepreneurship emerging from engineering colleges is essential.On the changing nature of engineering practice, Somanath pointed to Industry 4.0, describing how connectivity and automation are pushing productivity and forcing engineering disciplines to converge into product-oriented, cross-domain work. Referring to Chanakya University where he serves as chancellor, he said the institution has moved away from rigid departmental structures to encourage interdisciplinary learning and research.He advised graduating students to look beyond narrow labels such as electrical or electronics engineering and to acquire multi-domain skills through available upskilling courses, arguing that future opportunities would increasingly reward breadth alongside technical depth.
