Chennai, Jan 27 : Private space sector startup Skyroot Aerospace Private Ltd on Thursday said it had raised $4.5 million as a bridge round. With this funding, Skyroot Aerospace has raised $17 million till date, one of the largest by an Indian space sector start up. The 4.5M$ bridge round was led by Ram Shriram's (one of the first investors and board member of Google) Sherpalo Ventures and co-led by Wami Capital, existing investor Neeraj Arora (Former WhatsApp CBO) and former Google executive Amit Singhal. "In the last 18 months, we successfully demonstrated three cutting edge propulsion technologies used in our Vikram series of Space launch vehicles, and this year will be a year of hypergrowth, where we will be testing our final rocket stages for a launch, while continuing to build a strong order book for the first few launches," Pawan Kumar Chandana, Co-Founder and CEO, Skyroot Aerospace said. The company is developing three rockets -- Vikram 1, 2 and 3. Recently, Skyroot Aerospace tested its cryogenic engine called Dhawan-1 to be fixed in the upper state of the company's rocket Vikram-2. The company said Dhawan-1 is India's first privately developed cryogenic rocket engine fueled by liquid natural gas (LNG) and liquid oxygen (LoX). The engine uses LNG and LoX at cryogenic temperatures as propellants, which are high performance, low-cost and green. "This round helps us build critical infrastructure early-on and helps accelerate towards our launch this year. 2022 is going to be a big year for us and the entire Indian Space ecosystem," said Naga Bharath Daka, Co-Founder and COO of Skyroot. /IANS