AWAIS AHMED has vivid memories of April 2, 2022, the day Pixxel put its first hyperspectral imaging satellite Shakuntala in orbit from Cape Canaveral, U.S. He remembers feeling tense sitting in his Bangalore office due to weather uncertainties. It was India’s first private commercial imaging satellite. Before founding Pixxel, Awais, whose father ran a small business, was part of the founding engineering team of Hyperloop India. He recalls how early bootstrapped funding for Pixxel included reward money of a few thousand rupees given by his father every time he used to do well in exams.
Before securing Series A $27 million in early 2022 led by Radical Ventures, followed by Blume Ventures and LightSpeed, just before the ‘Shakuntala’ launch, the company was close to running out of money. From then on, every launch gave company data to back its claims. Use cases include detecting oil and natural gas leaks for companies like ONGC, keeping tabs on afforestation measures taken by mining companies and improving agriculture production using insights from data. In August 2022, Accenture’s VC arm, Accenture Venture, made an undisclosed investment in the company. In March this year, the company won a five-year contract from National Reconnaissance Office of U.S. — Rukmini Rao