Our Team
Existential (Astitva) Aerospace
Leadership Team
Dr. Bala Madhan (PhD) is an aerospace industry veteran with over two decades of leadership experience in solid, liquid and hybrid rocket motor development.
Propulsion Research Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville: Development of solid, liquid and bi-propellant rocket motor systems for NASA and other entities.
Space Propulsion Group, (affiliated to Stanford University): Paraffin-N2O Peregrine rocket motor program at NASA Ames, Paraffin-N2O4 hybrid motor system short-listed as the motor system studied for the NASA JPL Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) program slated for launch in 2026.
Sierra Nevada Corporation: Senior Aerospace Engineer involved in the development of the HTPB-Nitrous Oxide hybrid rocket motor for Dreamchaser vehicle and Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship 2 vehicle systems.
Hylmpulse GmbH (affliated to DLR): 2019 to 2021 Led the development team and advising on a hybrid rocket motor based launch system. Founder at Existential Aerospace overseeing all aspects of the system requirements.
Associate Fellow of the AIAA, Hybrid Rocket and Hypersonics Technical Committees.
Motivated into the aerospace field by the eminent Dr. Kalam.
Srinath Mallikarjunan (BTech) obtained his MS in Aerospace from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in 2008, specializing in Computational Fluid and Control theory.
After graduation, worked at National Aerospace Labs (NAL) in Bangalore, following which he started designing Guidance and navigation systems for UAV's at Unmanned Dyanamics.
An accomplished control theorist with many papers on topics as varied as reconfigurable (adaptive) flight control, system identification, estimation, etc.
As the Chief Scientist of Unmanned Dynamics, he has covered the entire product development lifecycle from theory to simulations to embedded development to flight tests. The work has won the DST-Lockheed Martin award for a fault tolerance autopilot and was shortlisted in the top 50, for robust trajectory tracking with obstacle avoidance for UAV's.
He developed over 25 core technologies in the field of Guidance, Navigation and control which have applications in a wide variety of products and holds a patent for a unique mixed pitch helicopter that bridges the gap between a conventional drone and a full fledged helicopter.
He is experienced in Analog and Digital design with an emphasis on Power electronics and enabled him to redesign the navigation systems and stabilizers for aircraft such as Jaguar and Hawk-Jet Trainer.
He is well versed with the business eco system pertaining to the Defense & Space Industry.
Ravi will be responsible for strategy, relationships in the domain, technology deployment, and certification requirements for Existential Aerospace.
Prof. Dr. Raghunandan Basavanahalli (Retired Dean, IISc Bangalore) is an expert combustion and propulsion, atomization and spray formation in propulsive devices and space propulsion systems.
ISRO, DRDO, CSIR, DST, IIST, IITs and many other institutions often seek his expertise.
