Pixxel is a Bengaluru based Indian satellite-imagery startup aiming to launch over 30 satellites by the end of 2022 to provide high-quality globe-spanning images on a daily basis. The company has secured a funding of $5 million recently which was backed by Blume Ventures, growX and Lightspeed India partners.
This fund is going to be utilised for the upcoming launch of the company’s first satellite, and the remaining funding will be used accordingly for the development of the forthcoming satellites. The CEO of Blackbridge and ex-President of Planet Labs, Ryan Johnson is also going to join the team and being the CEO of one of the biggest satellite-imaging companies in the world, he will bring a lot of experience to the table.
The company has previously raised $700,000 from Techstars and other companies too. But this time, the $5 million investment in the company is going to create a much more impact and help to accelerate the process of creating a web of satellites for global imaging.
The company also claims that the high-quality data that it acquires from its satellites can be used to predict massive calamities that can have a global effect. They will achieve this by feeding the data to their deep learning models that can help them identify and even predict these problems. Other useful scenarios where the satellites will come in handy are agriculture, urban monitoring, climate and forestry use cases.
The best part of this startup is the founder’s vision. Awaiz Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal aim to launch satellites at a cost that will be 5 to 10 times less than the industrial markets and at the same time provide imaging that will have no compromises but will be even superior than the competition.
Awaiz Ahmed, one of the founders of pixxel, also says that he is looking forward to work with ISRO. Ahmed said, “People at ISRO have been more receptive to ideas now. We will look to collaborate with them for our future launches. We look forward to building from India for not only this country but the world,”.
If this collaboration happens then, the startup that already has so much potential can reach much more heights in the future. Also, seeing that the market cap of the industry of image-satellite is estimated to cross over $5 billion by the end of 2025, we can expect our own Indian startup doing well in the space.
