In a first, Indian space tech co Pixxel gets $5m – Times of India

Sindhu Hariharan & Digbijay Mishra@timesgroup.com
Chennai/Bengaluru: In a first, the 18-month-old startup Pixxel has raised what is perhaps the largest seed funding of $5 million to send satellites into space from India. This also marks the first investment in the sector by established institutional venture capital firms Lightspeed India and Blume Ventures. Started by 22-year-old Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal, the startup plans to send its first earth-imaging satellite into space in November. GrowX Venture, Inventus Capital India, Stanford Angels and Ryan Johnson, who co-founded satellite imaging firm BlackBridge, have also participated in the fund-raise.
Pixxel has signed memorandums of understanding (MoUs) and letters of intent with leading agriculture and oil & gas firms in India and the US, who would use the image data. The new capital would largely be allocated to get the satellites into space and also build its proprietary data platform.
“Satellite has been manufactured and it’s being tested right now. We are working on a second satellite as well, which we plan to fly in the second half of next year,” said Ahmed. While its operations are across Bengaluru and Chennai, Pixxel is moving all its operations to the capital of Karnataka, he added. Ahmed said Pixxel has two Indian clients and eight more globally, across the US and Europe.
Space tech, as a sector, has seen increased entrepreneurial action as demand for imaging-tech grows across sectors, and it gets cheaper to make and launch small satellites. There are now 15 to 20 startups in the space tech sector compared to just a handful a few years ago, industry executives said. “There are a handful of founders building path-breaking technologies across launch, communication and satellites — a validation of this is to see Lightspeed invest in Pixxel,” Speciale Invest managing partner Vishesh Rajaram said.
Prior to this, Chennai-based Agnikul raised over $3 million in a pre-Series-A round in March from deep-tech investors Pi Ventures and Speciale Invest. Last year, Bengaluru-based Bellatrix raised around $3 million in a pre-Series-A funding led by IDFC-Parampara, StartupXseed and Bollywood star Deepika Padukone, among others.