Within the late 90s to early 2000s, in an idyllic village referred to as Aldur in Karnataka’s Chikkamagaluru district, a younger boy named Awais aspired to grow to be an astronaut. Throughout a time with out the web and smartphones, his father would offer him with encyclopaedias to discover area, galaxies and the universe.
Lower to 2015 in Rajasthan, and Awais’ love for area received wings on the BITS (Birla Institute of Know-how and Science) Pilani campus.
“There wasn’t a lot to do exterior the campus and I regarded for methods to maintain myself occupied after courses. Within the first and second years, I used to be a part of a scholar satellite tv for pc workforce referred to as Staff Anant. We labored on satellites with ISRO scientists. This was my first brush with satellites and I liked it,” says Awais Ahmed, who’s the co-founder and CEO of Pixxel as we speak.
Fixing his eyes on area
In his second 12 months of faculty, impressed by Elon Musk, Awais based Hyperloop India in 2016 together with a couple of others.
“Musk stored tweeting about hyperloops at the moment which piqued my curiosity,” he says. The SpaceX CEO envisions the hyperloop as an “ultra-high-speed public transportation system” wherein folks would journey in “autonomous electrical pods at 600+ miles per hour.”
SpaceX held a Hyperloop Pod competitors from 2015–2019 wherein scholar groups needed to construct a subscale prototype transport car. And Hyperloop India participated within the competitors in 2017. “We needed to construct a hyperloop pod that would journey in a one-mile-long vacuum tube at quick speeds. We had been one of many 20 finalists from 2,500 international groups,” says Awais.
As a scholar, his first brush with entrepreneurship was manufacturing this hyperloop pod with restricted sources. He says his workforce managed to fabricate it in three months and took it to the SpaceX manufacturing unit in Los Angeles.
“Once I noticed the Falcon 9 rocket there, I used to be mesmerised. I realised that area was my calling and that I needed to make a lifelong profession in it. I needed to discover how area can be utilized to contribute to the betterment of the planet,” provides the entrepreneur.
Again at Pilani, Awais dug deep into area expertise and its totally different avenues.
“Satellite tv for pc imagery appeared like an attention-grabbing space. I discovered that the present satellite tv for pc information was good, however not adequate in lots of use circumstances. For example, it could’t detect underground oil leaks, determine species and subspecies of crops and timber, or detect effluents and their composition in water our bodies. I knew that it could possibly be a lot better. That’s after I zeroed in on hyperspectral imaging satellites and launched Pixxel,” he says.
In February 2019, Awais co-founded Pixxel together with Kshitij Khandelwal and two different engineers.
Their objective is to create and launch a bunch of superior imaging satellites referred to as hyperspectral imaging satellites. These satellites could be able to capturing pictures of each location on Earth on daily basis. Moreover, Pixxel goals to develop a planet-wide well being monitoring system.
Monitoring the Earth’s well being
Hyperspectral imaging provides rather more detailed data than regular cameras.
“When accidents trigger inner bleeding, regular cameras can not see what’s occurring inside. So we use ultrasound and MRI imaging. Equally, when there are fuel leaks or crop illnesses, regular satellites can not see what’s improper. That is the place hyperspectral imaging satellites are available. They’ll seize pictures in over 100 wavelengths,” explains Awais.
Mixed with analytical instruments, this information can be utilized to seek out out details about agriculture, mining, the atmosphere, and many others. “Much like how sensors in a hospital monitor our very important indicators like coronary heart charge and blood stress, satellites can observe numerous points of our surroundings. They’ll detect the quantity of pollution within the environment, measure water air pollution, determine fuel leaks, and assess the well being of our forests and soil,” provides the area fanatic.
As Pixxel notes on their web site, “Figuring out these sources would be the precursor to constructing infrastructure in area that can shift heavy business away from earth. Thereby giving us a practical shot at reclaiming our planet from the irreversible results of local weather change.”
Pixxel displays the ‘pulse of the planet’.
Awais provides that with the assistance of the knowledge captured by the satellites, it could assist firms make higher selections for his or her companies.
“For instance, when fertiliser firms purchase our information, they’ll discover out the place nitrogen is missing within the soil by utilizing a nutrient map. Corporations can even test the efficiency of their crops and determine areas the place crop illnesses are extra prevalent,” he says.
Its purchasers are unfold throughout numerous fields like agriculture, oil and fuel, mining and environmental companies. Australian cloud-based agritech firm DataFarming is considered one of Pixxel’s 50 clients.
“We’ve got been effectively serviced by multispectral information for over 20 years. In actual fact, now we have 28,000 farms repeatedly accessing the DataFarming platform. Nevertheless, after we need to dig deeper, there are two essential points — spatial decision and spectral decision. As farm sizes enhance and we transfer into the age of automation, expertise goes to wish to fill the hole of figuring out crop points earlier. And that is the place hyperspectral information and parallel analysis are available,” says Tim Neale, Managing Director at DataFarming.
Pixxel has launched three satellites thus far and is gearing as much as launch six extra early subsequent 12 months. In April 2022, it launched ‘Shakuntala’ on the SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket, turning into one of many first Indian firms to launch a business satellite tv for pc.
In November 2022, Pixxel launched it’s third hyperspectral satellite tv for pc ‘Anand’ on an ISRO PSLV-C54 rocket. Anand is a 15 kg satellite tv for pc that can view our planet intimately and supply environmental information via greater than 150 wavelengths.
Overcoming funding challenges
For a bunch of 20-year-olds, elevating funds and constructing {hardware} was a significant problem. To safe their first funding, they reached out to the alumni of BITS Pilani. “We travelled to the San Francisco Bay Space to satisfy our seniors and persuade them,” he provides.
With the onset of COVID in 2020, the launch of their first satellite tv for pc was additionally delayed.
“We needed to construct utterly new {hardware} and we required some huge cash to construct and take a look at it. COVID additional slowed us down. We couldn’t work on our {hardware} on the tempo we often do. We additionally confronted provide points which delayed our launches. Nevertheless, we stored ourselves motivated,” says the CEO.
Earlier this 12 months, Pixxel raised $36 million from buyers together with Google. From 4 folks in 2019, they’ve now grown to an enormous workforce of 147 workers.
Awais, a 25-year-old now, has realised a couple of goals he noticed as a toddler. He’s engaged on cutting-edge area expertise and has despatched satellites into orbit. He says, “I nonetheless have many extra goals. I need to have the ability to journey and reside on a colony in area.”
Edited by Pranita Bhat