India's Biggest Space Startup: Awais Ahmed, Pixxel - Backstage with Millionaires

In this episode of the Backstage With Millionaires podcast, we sit down with Awis Ahmed, founder of Pixxel, to discuss his entrepreneurial journey.

00:00:00 Intro
00:02:41 Building the pod
00:06:25 Working at SpaceX
00:07:31 Why Awais chose asteroid mining
00:14:11 Why no one got into hyperspectral commercial space
00:22:23 Raising funds to build a satellite
00:32:58 Building the first satellite
00:43:54 Raising funds during the pandemic
00:49:41 How Pixxel generates revenue
00:50:21 Launching the satellite
1:09:58 Outro

Pixxel is a space data company building a constellation of the world’s highest-resolution hyperspectral earth imaging satellites and the analytical tools to mine insights from the data.

The images gathered by Pixxel's satellites will provide global coverage every 24 hours and help detect, monitor, and predict global phenomena across agriculture, mining, environment, and energy use cases.

About Awais Ahmed:

Awais Ahmed started his professional journey at HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited), as a research intern.

Around the same time in 2016, he was also the founder member and engineering lead at Hyperloop India.

He started Pixxel in 2019.

Connect with us:

#startup #entrepreneur #space

[rajeshmanivannan]

Have never seen an interview from start to end. Such an inspiring story. Hats off to Awais for his vision and Caleb for the wonderful interview

[youstron]

Very very impressive... Thanks to backstageM for bringing such inspiring people. Bring this person every 6 months and we want to listen updates. It will also be a good documentation for pixxel

[abduljaleel]

He belongs to Chikmagalur Karnataka India. That's my home town . Am proud of him ❤

[BeingSaurabh]

One of the best founder's Journey i have listened to. It was beautifully articulated by Awais. Often we say " Zero to One" but this was "Before Zero to One" startup journey story. Thanks Backstage with Millionaires for this

[hariharan]

Just finished my final year exams at BITS. Seeing guys like this doing insane stuff right out of BITS is extremely motivating, Hats off to the Pixxel team!

[krutikachauhan]

The point where he said that we didn, t have internet connection at our house, it really reminded me of my 2 neighbours who used to study really hard and turned out to be scientists at ISRO. They didn, t have any facilities and made it to the IIST without any coaching and they were toppers in their streams.

[skipavm]

Awais is a wonderful human being, great sense of humor, fair and considerate... Pixxel has developed an amazing culture of open collaboration and rooted in being a health monitor for the planet... I've enjoyed my time immensely with Pixxel - EVERYONE here counts and is treated with respect. Please inquire!

[antonio]

What a pleasure it was to listen to Awais Ahmed give a run down of his startup to the point where it is now. I wish the entire Team of PIXXEL the very best.

[shardulnikam]

1:03:12 US Gov is a client 🔥🔥🔥

This podcast is one of the best I have ever watched 😍😍😍 thanks Caleb!

[shaheermannan]

Ahmed podcast seems pro, and the clarity and way he explains the tech to business.Speechless!!!! Good luck Awis!

[siddharthmagadum]

Thanks Ahmed for sharing your startup journey with us👍 . Thanks BWM team for this podcast 🔥

[lord_of_love_and_thunder]

A truly multidisciplinary endeavor. Designing sensors and instruments, planning trajectories, communicating and processing high throughput data. There are few companies like this around the world. Kudos to these skilled and intrepid entrepreneurs!

[Shivam-H]

Thanks to the BWM Team the podcasts help me a lot in seeing the world more broadly. Keep it up guys

[Sandeep-zddq]

Great work Awais and congrats to your whole team, I hope soon you will be able to provide high quality hyper-spectral image of India to normal customers as well so that they can also build things on top of that.

[aadarshktofficial]

Truly aspiring. Watched the full podcast, really informative. Amazing to watch such startups grow.

[tomasbaron]

Wow, great and inspiring podcast. I recently encountered your channel, watching from Colombia and this got me really interested and started to investigate the startup world and opportunities in India. Thank You and a pleasure watching your content. ❤

[mdnayeem]

When someone at isro who had experience about 40 years say it can't be happened...and a guy just 21 years made it ...its just awesome

[rdongre]

Simply amazing; great communicator, equally good executor and a visionary!!

[karthik_kwads]

Wow! Impressive interview as always from BWM!
There is always someone who says it's impossible and then there's always someone breaking that barrier.

[bkmarksuser]

That was an awesome interview Caleb. Very inspiring journey by Awais, Indias Elon Musk to be👍.