:00:26. > :00:36.Get ready, your Indian experience starts now.
:00:37. > :00:40.As soon as you step off the plane, India hits you like a big,
:00:41. > :00:48.It is everything you've ever imagined it to be.
:00:49. > :00:56.The first thing you'll notice will be the traffic.
:00:57. > :01:11.For 70 years this country has been independent of British rule
:01:12. > :01:14.and the cities that have sprung up around
:01:15. > :01:18.the old colonial grandeur seem chaotic, but they do kinda work.
:01:19. > :01:25.And India has found a niche in the wider world.
:01:26. > :01:30.Half of its 1.2 billion people are aged 35 or under.
:01:31. > :01:33.Maybe that's why it's known for its IT know-how,
:01:34. > :01:38.And the bosses of some of the biggest tech companies
:01:39. > :01:46.in taking over the world of consumer technology.
:01:47. > :01:49.After all, how many Indian tech brands can you name?
:01:50. > :01:54.The truth is that although there is a middle class of consumers
:01:55. > :02:03.here willing to buy brands it's not actually that big or that rich.
:02:04. > :02:06.Not that many people here can really afford the latest of very
:02:07. > :02:10.We're here to see how India is preparing for its future
:02:11. > :02:18.and, let me tell you, it is reaching for the stars.
:02:19. > :02:22.In 2013, India became the fourth spacefaring nation to launch a probe
:02:23. > :02:25.into orbit around Mars and, unlike those who came before them,
:02:26. > :02:34.The Indian Space Research Organisation,
:02:35. > :02:38.Isro, has been gaining a reputation for doing tons of successful space
:02:39. > :02:45.Their Mars mission came in at just $74 million,
:02:46. > :02:48.that's less than it cost to make the film Gravity.
:02:49. > :02:51.And, in February this year, they made history again by launching
:02:52. > :02:56.a record 104 satellites on a single rocket.
:02:57. > :03:00.It could just be that India has created the perfect
:03:01. > :03:03.combination of big brains with big space experience,
:03:04. > :03:07.but a mentality for doing things on the cheap.
:03:08. > :03:11.Just the sort of place you might go if you wanted to,
:03:12. > :03:14.say, land a robot on the moon for the space equivalent
:03:15. > :03:17.How confident are you that this will work?
:03:18. > :03:28.Welcome to the earthbound HQ of Team Indus, one of the handful
:03:29. > :03:32.of start-ups competing for the Google Lunar XPRIZE,
:03:33. > :03:36.that's $20 million for the first commercial company to land a rover
:03:37. > :03:44.The Team Indus space craft goes into two days of Earth orbit
:03:45. > :03:47.and then, boom, 4.5 days to the moon.
:03:48. > :03:52.12 days of spiralling down to the surface and,
:03:53. > :03:55.if all goes well, out comes the rover, travels half a kilometre,
:03:56. > :03:57.sends back HD video and wins the prize.
:03:58. > :04:10.Rahul Narayan is the co-founder of Team Indus and has been
:04:11. > :04:16.here since the start of the project, way back in 2010.
:04:17. > :04:20.And at that point you had no idea how you would acheive it?
:04:21. > :04:23.Yes, I googled and figured out what Wikipedia had
:04:24. > :04:24.to say about landing on the mood.
:04:25. > :04:28.You did an internet search on how to land on the moon?
:04:29. > :04:33.Did it have any useful information?
:04:34. > :04:39.It said there had been 85 attempts and I think every second attempt
:04:40. > :04:45.Six years later, there are about 100 people working very hard here and it
:04:46. > :04:47.certainly looks like they know their space stuff.
:04:48. > :04:53.Even the toilets are appropriately labelled.
:04:54. > :04:55.And they've built themselves all the things that
:04:56. > :04:58.a serious space company should have, like a mission control room,
:04:59. > :05:01.a model lander that makes smoke and a simulated lunar surface
:05:02. > :05:14.So what do you use to simulate moon dust?
:05:15. > :05:17.Just like national space agencies, testing every component
:05:18. > :05:19.and simulating every stage of the mission is a huge part
:05:20. > :05:23.We're making sure we do everything right.
:05:24. > :05:30.We're going to make it frugal, specific to the mission,
:05:31. > :05:32.but there's absolutely no corners that we're cutting.
:05:33. > :05:35.And, to look at it from a more philosophical way,
:05:36. > :05:41.We don't have a flight spare, so if one blows up we can go and fly
:05:42. > :05:43.the other, we have to get this right.
:05:44. > :05:47.Team Indus is one of five start-ups from around the world that have
:05:48. > :05:48.secured launch contracts for their rovers.
:05:49. > :05:51.While they can't say for sure, they think they'll launch before
:05:52. > :05:57.any other team and so perhaps be the first team to land and win!
:05:58. > :06:01.Well, that's except for the fact that to save costs they have had
:06:02. > :06:04.to sell some of their spare launch weight to a competitor rover.
:06:05. > :06:07.Japan's Team Hakuto will onboard too.
:06:08. > :06:10.You're both going to get to the moon at the same time.
:06:11. > :06:15.It's whoever touches down first and whoever has the fastest rover?
:06:16. > :06:20.It's going to be crazy! In a manner of speaking, yes.
:06:21. > :06:31.So it's a race, it will be a very interesting race,
:06:32. > :06:34.and once we touch down and both the rovers are deployed,
:06:35. > :06:36.let's see which one makes 500m first.
:06:37. > :06:41.All of that assumes of course that the rovers
:06:42. > :06:43.make it to the moon in the first place.
:06:44. > :06:46.Space exploration is a risky business and when it goes wrong it
:06:47. > :06:51.Six years, hundreds of thousands of hours of effort and millions
:06:52. > :06:54.spent and there's certainly a lot riding on getting things right.
:06:55. > :07:01.You mitigate the big pieces and then the you start mitigating the smaller
:07:02. > :07:05.risks and, at the end of the day, absolutely, one small wrong piece
:07:06. > :07:09.of code that made it through could kill the entire mission.
:07:10. > :07:13.There is a word here in India that I think describes Team Indus's
:07:14. > :07:25.I've come to the centre of Mumbai, to Dharavi -
:07:26. > :07:34.Here, in its tiny alleyways, jugaad is all around,
:07:35. > :07:36.as a desperately poor population reuses as much
:07:37. > :07:43.Built by workers who flocked to the city over
:07:44. > :07:46.hundreds of years, some of the houses here date back
:07:47. > :08:06.Up ahead, there is a pile of shredded denim which they use
:08:07. > :08:11.They burn it to fuel the kilns, just like they burn a lot of stuff
:08:12. > :08:16.You can really tell the air quality is very poor.
:08:17. > :08:20.You just have to take a few lung fulls and it
:08:21. > :08:23.starts to burn the back of your throat, it makes your eyes sting.
:08:24. > :08:26.The smoke is a necessary evil for the people of Dharavi.
:08:27. > :08:29.Like most of the developing world, pollution has been the price
:08:30. > :08:31.India is paying for a booming economy.
:08:32. > :08:33.The smog that gives Mumbai its spectacular sunsets has also
:08:34. > :08:36.made it the fifth most polluted mega city in the world.
:08:37. > :08:39.And when the sun disappears before it hits the horizon,
:08:40. > :08:47.In November, 2016, the Indian government declared the air
:08:48. > :08:50.pollution in Delhi a national emergency, with harmful pollutants
:08:51. > :09:00.And it's not just caused by all of the traffic.
:09:01. > :09:08.I was surprised to find out a lot of it comes from diesel generators.
:09:09. > :09:10.See, the electricity in India isn't very reliable,
:09:11. > :09:12.but plenty of businesses need guaranteed power,
:09:13. > :09:15.so they have there own individual generators that fire up whenever
:09:16. > :09:19.the electricity goes down and that means there are loads
:09:20. > :09:22.of exhaust pipes like this all over the city, which regularly belch out
:09:23. > :09:31.When you start looking for them, they're everywhere.
:09:32. > :09:34.Even the mobile masts have backup generators.
:09:35. > :09:38.Here in Bangalore, we've come across a small project to capture
:09:39. > :09:49.So what we have built is a device that attaches to the exhaust pipe
:09:50. > :09:53.of the chimneys and this can be attached to pretty much any exhaust
:09:54. > :09:59.pipe, irrespective of what is the age or type of engine
:10:00. > :10:02.you are running, and it captures practically whatever matter comes
:10:03. > :10:11.Once you capture matter that is substantially carbon,
:10:12. > :10:14.which is like the basis of practically everything that
:10:15. > :10:17.exists in the world, at present we recycle it into inks,
:10:18. > :10:19.which we believe is something used by practically everybody
:10:20. > :10:27.The headquarters of Graviky Labs is a mix of art studio and mad
:10:28. > :10:33.laboratory, the perfect combination, if you ask me!
:10:34. > :10:37.Their so-called air ink does have a few restrictions.
:10:38. > :10:41.It will only ever come in black and at the moment it's not good
:10:42. > :10:43.enough quality to be used in printers.
:10:44. > :10:46.Graviky is giving it to artists, who are finding their own
:10:47. > :10:49.Painting and screenprinting, for example, for use
:10:50. > :11:03.And while the ink may only have limited uses at present,
:11:04. > :11:07.Nikhil insists it is still better to put the carbon to good use rather
:11:08. > :11:12.There are a lot of technologies that have captured pollution in one way
:11:13. > :11:16.or the other, but if you don't recycle it you are actually leaving
:11:17. > :11:34.I'm afraid that's all we have time for in the shortcut of Click, the
:11:35. > :11:39.full-length version is for you on iPlayer right now and there's loads
:11:40. > :11:45.of extra photos from our trip to India at:
:11:46. > :11:46.Thanks for watching and we'll see you soon.