Page 43 - MMI _ MayJune2021 (single-pages)

STARTUP

REACHING FOR THE SKY

Space data company Pixxel is a result of a strong desire to explore what’s
beyond our planet. The founders shared love for space and space technology
has shaped many an innovation that aims at bringing a lasting impact in areas
like agriculture and pollution monitoring.

Source: Pixxel

T he idea as unique as pod competition in 2017, they help tackle problems in agricul-
founding a space data built a hyperloop pod proto- ture, predict yields and track
company can only type, took it to the SpaceX HQ the spread of certain crop pests
in LA and presented it to Elon and diseases, detect illegal min-
emerge out of a deep passion for Musk. “After the competition ing, predict, and monitor nat-
ended, we were looking at oth- ural disasters and forest fires
the subject and a desire to further er challenges to solve and doing among other pressing problems.
something in space and decided
delve into it. “Both of us have al- to take a shot at IBM Watson AI Invention out of necessity
XPRIZE,” he shares. The satellite imagery of the
ways been interested in space Their goal was to build space earth that was freely available
technology with AI tools that for analysis in most cases was
and have grown up listening to could be used to bring about a years old. That was important
lasting impact in areas like agri- because the team could not fix
and reading about the heroics of culture and pollution monitor- what it could not see. “To vali-
ing. They started with building date whether this was an ac-
ISRO in the early 2000s,” confirms AI models that could take in tual problem faced by people
terabytes of satellite imagery worldwide, we reached out to
POONAM PEDNEKAR Kshitij Khandelwal, Co-Founder and extract actionable insights many companies in Europe and
Chief Copy Editor and patterns from that data to the US that analyzed satellite
Magic Wand Media Inc & CTO, Pixxel, referring to his
poonam.pednekar@
magicwandmedia.in Co-Founder Awais Ahmed.

The duo met at BITS (Birla Insti-

tute of Technology and Science)

Pilani and soon after worked to-

gether as part of the Hyperloop

India team where Ahmed was a

founding team member. As a fi-

nalist of the SpaceX Hyperloop

www.mmindia.co.in | 43May-June 2021