Pixxel, a space technology company working towards creating India’s first constellation of microsatellites in the LEO, announced that it has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Blume Ventures, GrowX Ventures and Lightspeed India.
Other investors that participated in the round include Inventus Capital India, Stanford Angels and Ryan Johnson, co-founder of satellite imaging company BlackBridge. Johnson will join Pixxel’s board of directors.
Founded in 2019 by Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal, Pixxel will utilise the funding to launch their first satellite in November atop a Russian Soyuz rocket, and build and launch its second satellite sometime in mid-2021.
The startup will also utilise a part of the funding to build its proprietary data platform for analysis of satellite images.
“The reason we raised $5 million is it provides us enough capital for a couple of backup launches in case the first one doesn’t go well,” said Awais Ahmed, co-founder and CEO of Pixxel. “It’s also enough money for us to achieve our next milestone of having hardware up in space and generating enough business traction to go out and get customers.”
Once its hardware is proven in space, Pixxel plans to quickly create a constellation of 30 earth imaging satellites that will be up in space between the end of 2022 and mid-2023. The company has lined up customers such as Satsure and Skymet to buy its data in India, along with other global agriculture, oil and gas and weather tracking companies.
“Pixxel has identified a unique opportunity in the remote sensing space, to solve huge problems across industries that have never been tackled before,” said Sanjay Nath, Managing Partner at Blume Ventures. “The time for space tech is now, driven by many tailwinds – the proliferation of micro satellites, reduced launch costs, and the need for more real-time deep intelligence on our planet.”
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