Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal bonded over video games at BITS Pilani. Now their start-up Pixxel is about to send micro-satellites into space. They spoke to Brut about their journey.
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00:00Now, your usual satellites have cameras that are similar to your phone cameras, which take
00:26images in red, green and blue.
00:29However, when we want to understand how the crop is doing, this information is not enough.
00:36You need more information that allows you to understand what specific disease is affecting
00:43the crop.
00:44Or when you are that far up in space, you also need to identify what crop it is in the
00:47first place.
00:48So all these parameters are identified by a type of imaging called hyperspectral imaging.
00:52We build hyperspectral satellites, put them up in space and operate them.
01:00Pixel is one of the companies that we're working with.
01:03That's one of the first Indian space tech companies.
01:06They have a high ambition of launching the satellites, the first microsatellites, and
01:11really changing how many sectors of the economy, including agriculture, will be transformed.
01:22So Shidesh and I, we met while playing video games, and it was over one of those video
01:26sessions where I pitched the idea of Pixel to him.
01:30I was born in a village closer to the district of Guldhana in Maharashtra called Malkapur.
01:40Both my parents are one of the first in their families to get educated.
01:45For my parents, it has always been very important to ensure that I get good education.
01:50So I grew up in a small village, which has now sort of turned into a town called Laldur.
01:55My dad is a pharmacist and my mom is a homemaker, and that's where I grew up.
02:00My parents were very encouraging and supportive.
02:02They did not say that, oh, you need to go down this path.
02:05What made it a little easier in the beginning that, you know, there was no roadblock or
02:09there was no one stopping us.
02:14Every time there's been a funding round, it's been a sigh of relief and not like, hey, there's
02:19more money.
02:20So that was nice.
02:26I always loved reading science fiction books, writing nonfiction books, reading about space.
02:31But I think the one thing that has changed is I don't have to think a lot or think twice
02:35in terms of getting books to be able to read.
02:37I bought a bass guitar for myself.
02:39So I wanted to buy one since I was in second year of college.
02:43I've been teaching myself some bass.
02:46We want to go out there, explore the asteroid belt, you know, be able to build tech that
02:52can extract resources from the asteroid belt and further the expansion of humankind into
03:00space outside of the Earth.
03:02So, you know, we want to make sure that we have a backup plan if the Earth goes bust.
03:06Not just that, we want to make life here on Earth better.
03:09And that is something that both of us truly believe in.