Indian space technology start-up Pixxel secures $5 million in seed funding

Indian space-technology startup Pixxel said on Wednesday it has raised $5 million in seed round led by Blume Ventures, growX ventures and Lightspeed India.

The round also included contributions from Inventus Capital India and other angel investors including Stanford Angels and Ryan Johnson, a veteran in the earth imaging space, it said in a statement.

The new funding will strengthen Pixxels plans for its first satellite launch later this year and accelerate development of the second satellite, it said.

In conjunction with the funding, Ryan Johnson, previously founder and CEO at Blackbridge, a Canadian earth- imaging company, and ex-President at Planet Labs, one of the largest satellite imaging companies in the world, will be joining the Board of Directors at the company.

Pixxel said it is building a constellation of earth-imaging small satellites that will provide global coverage every 24 hours. Pixxel was founded in February 2019 by then 21-year olds Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal while still studying in their final year of undergraduate studies at BITS Pilani.

"Pixxels satellites will collect information-rich data at a much higher quality than todays satellites that will then be analysed using Pixxels proprietary machine and deep learning models in order to detect, monitor and predict global problems and phenomena," the statement said. The first satellite is scheduled to launch towards the end of this year on a Soyuz rocket, it was stated.

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