Grew up without internet or smartphone: Karnataka village boy who built Pixxel and won NASA contract
Long before high-speed internet and AI tools became a part of students’ daily lives, learning often relied on whatever textbooks were available. For a boy who grew up in a small village in Karnataka, there was no internet, no smartphone and YouTube videos to answer questions about places. There were only books that his father brought home and thoughts that refused to stop asking questions.That boy was Awais Ahmed. Today, satellites built by his company, Pixxel, orbit the Earth, helping to detect crop stress, methane emissions, industrial pollution and environmental changes that conventional satellites fail to capture. What started as a childhood curiosity has grown into one of the most popular Indian art trends.
When interest had to change the internet
Awais Ahmed grew up in Aldur, a village in Karnataka’s Chikkamagaluru district, about five hours from Bengaluru. Access to the Internet came when he was in the 8th grade, meaning he spent most of his childhood learning the old ways.His father recognized his interest in space and always brought home books about galaxies, planets and the universe. Those books became Awais’ window to a world he couldn’t explore online.By the time he got to college, that curiosity had turned into a passion.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 technical director of Hyperloop India, one of the finalists in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition.Instead of spending another year completing a dual degree, he chose another path, building a company he believed could revolutionize satellite technology.
A problem no satellite could solve
In 2018, Awais and his BITS Pilani colleague Kshitij Khandelwal were participating in the IBM Watson AI Challenge. Their project required detailed satellite imagery to predict crop health.Data not available.Conventional satellites capture the Earth in only a few bands of wide color range, making it difficult to detect subtle changes invisible to the human eye. Problems such as early crop disease, methane leaks, illegal mining or industrial waste often go undetected until significant damage has already occurred.Instead of accepting the limit, the two students decided to solve it themselves.Using the money he borrowed from Awais’ father and living on about Rs 10,000 a month, he started Pixxel in February 2019 when he was still in his twenties.
From a student startup to a company backed by global investors
What started as an idea for college has since become one of India’s biggest privacy issues.Pixxel has raised $95 million from investors including Google, Radical Ventures and Lightspeed, making it the world’s most funded company.In 2025, the company successfully launched all six of its Firefly satellites into orbit. Unlike conventional satellites, the Pixxel constellation captures the Earth in more than 250 bands at a five-meter scale, producing visual information 50 times better than traditional Earth systems.This technology has practical applications that extend beyond space exploration. It can help farmers detect crop stress weeks before damage occurs, detect methane leaks from power plants, monitor illegal mining operations and track pollutants entering rivers and lakes.Pixxel’s rapid rise has also brought it to international attention. TIME included the company among the 100 Best Inventions of 2023, while the World Economic Forum named it a Technology Pioneer in 2024. In the same year, Pixxel became the first in India to obtain a contract with NASA and also signed a five-year contract with the US National Reconnaissance Office.For Awais, the journey has also brought personal recognition. He has also featured in Forbes 30 Under 30, MIT Innovators Under 35 and Fortune India’s 40 Under 40, while co-founder Kshitij Khandelwal has also been featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.For students, however, the most interesting part of the story lies elsewhere. Awais Ahmed did not grow up surrounded by high technology. He grew up surrounded by books, questions and curiosity.His journey is a reminder that while technology can accelerate learning, it is curiosity that starts it. Sometimes, an encyclopaedia in a small village can inspire an idea that eventually reaches the sky.
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