New Delhi, Aug. 8 -- India's private space startups are finding it hard to get top-notch talent as there aren't enough graduates trained in niche topics and specialized skills. And even the small number of candidates available prefer companies overseas because of low salaries back home. While firms are increasing average pay and also training employees, niche talent in rocketry, propulsion technologies, photonics and sensors-the differentiating factors among space startups-is in short supply, according to founders, analysts and industry observers that Mint spoke with. Around 175 institutions in India offer undergraduate degrees in aerospace engineering, while 75 offer postgraduate courses, according to Mint's analysis of five educational services platforms. Around 8,000 aerospace engineers graduated last year, accounting for just 0.5% of the 1.5 million engineers who pass out of Indian colleges annually. That includes the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), which is affiliated with the Union government's Department of Space. But it's more like a chicken-and-egg situation: while there are few qualified candidates, the salaries also aren't good enough to encourage students to select such courses. While none of the startups disclosed their salary offers, citing confidentiality and competition, Mint found that freshers, working on low-value software engineering or satellite assembly projects are offered packages as low as Rs.4 lakh a year. However, for niche roles, fresher payouts go up to Rs.30 lakh a year-or even Rs.60 lakh per annum for engineers with about three years of experience in allied industries. "About 30% of our hires are freshers directly out of colleges, but we recruit the rest from various industries such as automobiles," said Pawan Kumar Chandana, cofounder and chief executive of Hyderabad-headquartered Skyroot Aerospace. "For most engineers that we hire, we've set up skilling and training programmes, and it takes about six months to a year for them to get ready to work on various projects." According to Anirudh Sharma, cofounder and chief executive of Bengaluru-based Digantara Research and Technologies, India doesn't have enough formal university courses or research programmes in skills such as photonics and optical engineering. "For instance, National Institute of Technology, Warangal (in Telangana) ran about five batches and produced some of the best optical communications engineers in the country-but they are a finite pool, out of which some are employed across industries and others have moved abroad," he said. In most cases, startups like Bengaluru-based Bellatrix Aerospace hire from other engineering streams. "For instance, we take recruits with chemical and metallurgical engineering backgrounds and train them to work on our proprietary rocket propulsion technology," said Yashas Karanam, co-founder and chief operating officer. Specialized space courses are rare. Towards 2023-end, Pawan Goenka, chairman of government-affiliated In-Space (Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre), had said the agency is working with the All India Council for Technical Education to introduce space curricula in engineering institutes. On 28 July, In-Space announced a short-term skill development course for "space technology in agriculture" with Amity University, Noida. It is a certificate course and does not offer the kind of deep dive that would produce the niche skills that Chandana, Sharma and Karanam are looking for....