My Indian Life

The Boy Who Dreamt of Space
Bollywood actress Kalki Koechlin presents tales of what it’s like to be young and Indian in the 21st Century.
“I want to be the first human on Mars,” says Gadhadar Reddy.
“If you say something audacious… then the universe finds a way to support us to make things happen.”

In the final episode of the series, Kalki speaks to tech entrepreneur Gadhadar Reddy about the unusual path he is pursuing to get to another planet.

Rather than join an existing space programme to become an astronaut, Gadhadar has taken a much more strategic approach.
He set up a company to produce the materials needed to build spacecraft capable of such a long journey – because without this, nobody is going to get to Mars.

Pretty much everyone in India’s space industry told him he was wasting his time – and yet over the past decade he’s been doing an impressive job of proving them all wrong.