Bangalore headquartered spacetech startup Pixxel, which is working towards creating India's first constellation of nano-satellites, has raised an undisclosed pre-seed round of funding from growX Ventures and other prominent angels such as Raju Reddy, Dileep Nath, Pawan Sarda, and others.
Pixxel makes satellite imagery useful by building a constellation of nanosatellites to provide global, real-time and affordable satellite imagery and the tools to analyse that data.
Pixxel is currently manufacturing the first of their satellites, which will be launch-ready by the end of the year and will be put in orbit early next year. The seed round of funding will be used to manufacture the prototype satellite.
“Our vision when we started was to build a world-beating company out of India that would operate at the cutting edge of space technology and contribute meaningfully towards space exploration,” the company said.
Founded in late 2018, by BITS Pilani alumni - Kshitij Khandelwal and Awais Ahmed, Pixxel is building a constellation of remote sensing satellites that will launch into space and beam down data that will be used to map minerals, water, and other resources on the moon, Mars, and even the asteroid belt.
The team behind Pixxel is serial creators, as the same team were the only Indian and one of the two Asian finalist teams at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition in 2017. The team were one of the 20 finalists out of the 2500 that had applied globally for the competition, and had presented a working Hyperloop pod prototype to Elon Musk at the SpaceX headquarters in LA.
Sheetal Bahl, Managing Partner at growX Ventures, said in a press statement, "Awais and Kshitij are the youngest, and among the most impressive founders we have invested in. They are envisioning the creation of a solution to capture high-resolution information of every location on the planet."
“This will enable them to monitor ever-changing situations that influence the environment, the economy, the security of nations, and help governments and organisations make smarter day-to-day operational decisions,” Sheetal said.
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