Team Garud, the rocketry division of the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, is an inclusive environment that embraces change, new ideas, respect for the individual and equal opportunity to succeed. We relentlessly pursue excellence in everything we do, every day exhibiting the strong will to win so we all are geared up for the 12th Inter-collegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) which focuses on student designing and technical skills in the field of mechanics, aerodynamics, avionics and recovery systems. Team Garud’s project for the year 2017 competition was named ‘Kalam’ as a tribute to Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam, the former President and commonly known as the Missile Man of India. His achievement and success carried India to a height in the space research and development. Dr. Kalam also directed two revolutionary projects – Project Devil and Project Valiant. The work on these missiles led to the successful development of the Prithvi and Agni missile. Dr. Kalam’s work gained a lot of respect and admiration, he well deserved the title of the ‘Missile Man’ of the country and he lives on in our memories as the greatest inspiration and a true visionary, hence, to continue this legacy in the field of Rocket Science, Team Garud's ‘Kalam’, a sounding rocket, was designed to make a sub-orbital flight up to 10,000 ft (AGL) and perform scientific experiments during the same. Spaceport America Cup (SAC) has collaborated for this mission with Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA) which seeks to further the field of experimental sounding rocketry to conduct the 12th Inter-collegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) 2017, which is to be held in Spaceport America, New Mexico. Team Garud stood 34th out of 115 Teams who represented their respective universities from all around the world.