Part-history records for small Indian factories that supply space companies
TL;DR Partpedigree is shop-floor software for small Indian machine shops and fabricators that supply rocket and satellite makers. It records every step a part goes through, from raw material to final inspection, and turns that into the history pack buyers demand. Suppliers pay a monthly subscription per site.
India's private space companies are moving from prototypes to production. A private Indian rocket reached orbit in July 2026 and a bigger variant is due in early 2027[1]. Those rockets are built from parts made by small suppliers, and each part has to come with proof of where its material came from and what was done to it.
Getting approved is slow. Buyers may spend six to twelve months auditing a new precision-parts maker and running trial batches, and they judge daily practice, not just certificates[2]. One large steel plant needed about 15 months and some 120 people to get AS 9100D certification[3].
A 40-person machine shop can't spare that, and many still run on paper travellers and spreadsheets (my assumption, to verify).
Partpedigree gives each part a digital record from the moment material arrives. Workers scan a code at each station, attach the material test certificate, log machine settings and inspection readings, and flag any deviation. When the batch ships, the supplier exports a clean history pack in whatever format the buyer asks for. If a buyer finds a problem in a part then the supplier can trace every other part from the same material lot in minutes.
It's built for small shops - tablets and phones instead of terminals, Hindi and regional-language screens, and pricing a 30-person firm can carry.
I reframed the seed, which pitched autonomous lunar delivery tracked on a blockchain. India has no commercial lunar cargo market to serve, and a few hundred suppliers do not need a blockchain to trust a shared, signed record. What survives from the seed is the tracking, moved to where Indian space hardware actually gets made.
The supplier pays, because the record is what keeps it on the approved list. Buyers such as launch and satellite companies may subsidise the first year for key suppliers to cut their own inspection work. Foreign tools exist, but the US vendors publish no prices and sell mainly to the space companies themselves[4][5]. The Indian price is mine to test.
The 2023 space policy lets private companies run end-to-end space activities[6], and the first private orbital rocket has flown[1]. Foreign buyers are also looking at Indian suppliers, while picking only a narrow band they trust[2]. A supplier with clean records gets into that band faster.
Nobody publishes a figure for traceability software in India's space supply chain. The narrower anchors - about 440 Indian space-tech startups by 2026[7], many of them buyers of machined and fabricated parts, and clusters of AS9100 suppliers in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune[2].
Supplier counts need to be built bottom-up, one cluster at a time.
One US vendor sells a factory operating system with as-built traceability, to US space firms[4]. Another sells procedure and test software to NASA and private launchers[5]. Both sell to the prime manufacturer, not its small suppliers. Large ERP suites cover traceability but they're heavy for a small shop.
I found no India-first tool built for the supplier side.
| Difficulty | Moderate (37/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹45–90 L |
| Time to launch | 5–8 months |
The software is ordinary. Adoption on the shop floor is the hard part, because workers have to scan and log at every step, even on a rushed night shift when nobody's watching. You also need buyers to accept your history packs instead of their own forms.
No licence to run the software itself. Private firms can make space components under the 2023 space policy, and component supply isn't an activity IN-SPACe authorises[6].
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI sign off a part or decide whether a deviation is acceptable. That call belongs to a named quality engineer, and the record has to show it.
Want to work out the AI layer for Partpedigree? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
This suits a founder who has worked in aerospace quality or manufacturing software and can sell to MSME owners. If you're mainly drawn by the space label then honestly, skip it.
Prove first that one launch or satellite company will accept your history pack from three of its suppliers.
Plan for roughly ₹45–90 L over 5–8 months, mostly on product build and the slow sales cycle with small factories.
No sector licence. You need company and GST registration and DPDP compliance, and your records must hold up to AS9100 audits your customers face.
Yes. Aerospace suppliers everywhere have the same paperwork problem. Check local export-control rules on technical data before you host it.
The free Partpedigree validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the data and export-control checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for suppliers and buyers, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Partpedigree or something close to it? The make-or-break work is getting one space buyer to accept your records in place of its own forms, and I can help you plan that first conversation. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.