Grew up without internet or smartphone: The village boy in Karnataka who built Pixxel and won a NASA contract
Long before high-speed internet and AI tools became a part of students’ daily lives, learning often depended on available books. For a boy growing up in a small village in Karnataka, there was no internet connection, no smartphone, and no YouTube videos to answer questions about space. There were only encyclopedias that his father brought home and an imagination that refused to stop asking questions.That boy was Awais Ahmed. Today, satellites built by his company, Pixxel, are orbiting Earth, helping to detect crop stress, methane leaks, industrial pollution and environmental changes that regular satellites often fail to pick up. What started with childhood curiosity has grown into one of India’s most celebrated space tech startups.
When curiosity had to replace the Internet
Awais Ahmed grew up in Aldur, a village in Karnataka’s Chikkamagaluru district, nearly five hours from Bangalore. Internet access only came when he was in Class 8, meaning most of his childhood was spent learning the old fashioned way.His father recognized his fascination with space and regularly brought home encyclopedias about galaxies, planets and the universe. Those books became Awais’ window into a world she couldn’t explore online.By the time he got to college, that curiosity had turned into ambition.At BITS Pilani, where he studied Mathematics, Awais joined Team Anant, the institute’s student satellite program in collaboration with ISRO. He also became the engineering lead for Hyperloop India, one of the finalist teams in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition.Rather than spend an extra year completing a dual degree, he chose a different path: creating a company he believed could transform satellite technology.
The problem that no satellite could solve
In 2018, Awais and his BITS Pilani batchmate Kshitij Khandelwal were participating in the IBM Watson AI Challenge. Their project required highly detailed satellite imagery to predict crop health.The data simply did not exist.Conventional satellites capture the Earth in only a limited number of broad spectral bands, making it difficult to detect subtle changes invisible to the human eye. Problems such as early crop diseases, methane leaks, illegal mining or industrial pollutants often go unnoticed until significant damage has already occurred.Instead of accepting the limitation, the two students decided to solve it themselves.With money borrowed from Awais’ father and living on about 10,000 rupees a month, they founded Pixxel in February 2019 when they were still in their twenties.
From a student startup to a company backed by global investors
What started as an ambitious university idea has since become one of the biggest success stories in India’s private space.Pixxel has raised about $95 million from investors including Google, Radical Ventures and Lightspeed, making it the most funded hyperspectral imaging company in the world.In 2025, the company successfully launched all six Firefly satellites into orbit. Unlike conventional satellites, the Pixxel constellation captures the Earth in more than 250 spectral bands at a resolution of five meters, producing about 50 times more spectral information than traditional Earth observation systems.The technology has practical applications that extend far beyond space exploration. It can help farmers detect crop stress weeks before visible damage appears, identify methane leaks from energy infrastructure, monitor illegal mining activities and track pollutants entering rivers and lakes.Pixxel’s rapid rise has also earned it international recognition. TIME listed the company among its 100 best inventions of 2023, while the World Economic Forum named it a technology pioneer of 2024. In the same year, Pixxel became the first Indian space startup to land a contract with NASA and also signed a five-year deal with the US National Reconnaissance Office.For Awais, the trip has also meant personal recognition. It has been featured in Forbes 30 Under 30, MIT Innovators Under 35 and Fortune India’s 40 Under 40, while its co-founder Kshitij Khandelwal has also been recognized in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.For students, however, the most remarkable part of the story lies elsewhere. Awais Ahmed did not grow up surrounded by cutting-edge technology. He grew up surrounded by books, questions and curiosity.His journey is a reminder that while technology can accelerate learning, it’s often curiosity that starts it. Sometimes an encyclopedia in a small town can inspire an idea that eventually reaches space.
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