From Firefly To Honeybee: How India’s Pixxel Is Widening What Satellites Can See

In 2024, NASA was looking at how to incorporate hyperspectral imagery at scale. Having been introduced in the early 1980s, hyperspectral imaging quickly became the standard for aerial imagery, but the problem NASA had on its hands was using hyperspectral imaging cost-effectively to supplement its Earth science research from space.

It had already begun roping in startups in 2017, but in 2024, it did something it had never done. It selected an Indian startup for the first time. That startup was Bengaluru-based Pixxel, selected for its hyperspectral Earth observation datasets with proprietary granular insights for work in climate change, agriculture, biodiversity, resource management and more.

Pixxel’s selection under NASA’s $476 Mn Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition Program changed the course for the startup.

In August 2026, two years after that selection, Pixxel has expanded its commercial satellite constellation to provide data to governments and enterprises and has signed up with the likes of the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), India’s IN-SPACe for the National Earth Observation Constellation and even announced its next-generation Honeybee satellites.

It already has some milestones under its belt, such as launching India’s first private commercial imaging satellite and the world’s first commercial hyperspectral satellite. And more recently, the startup has announced partnerships with Sarvam AI to develop and build India’s first orbital data centre.

It’s been a whirlwind two years for Pixxel and its founders Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal, at a time when Indian spacetech itself has matured. The startup is now preparing to raise its next funding round to take the step up to the next level, having already raised $96 Mn from Google, Blume Ventures, Lightspeed, GrowX Ventures and Techstars.

The timing of Pixxel’s expansion is equally significant. India’s private space industry has steadily moved beyond launch ambitions, with startups now building technologies that are finding customers across the world. The recent launch by Skyroot underlines this growing maturity.

From Space Fascination To Building Satellites

Founded in February 2019 by BITS Pilani alumni Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal, Pixxel today operates out of Bengaluru and California, with subsidiaries in other geographies too. It has six satellites in orbit, employs more than 280 people and is preparing its next generation of satellites. The startup serves customers across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Southeast Asia and India, while also working with multiple government agencies.

Long before Pixxel existed, cofounder and CEO Awais Ahmed was fascinated by space as a kid when a travelling salesman brought encyclopaedias to his village in Karnataka’s Chikkamagaluru district.

That fascination found direction at BITS Pilani, where Ahmed and Khandelwal joined Team Anant, the institute’s student nanosatellite team, which worked under ISRO’s student satellite programme. Building satellites as students gave the duo their first hands-on exposure to space technology, and eventually, their project was selected as a finalist in SpaceX’s Hyperloop competition in the US.

In a past interaction with Inc42, Ahmed revealed that the primary thesis for Pixxel was that extant satellite data was not enough for advanced applications, which is why hyperspectral imaging satellites became the startup’s focus.

Solving The Problem Of What Satellites See

Simply put, hyperspectral imaging is a remote sensing technology where an imaging spectrometer collects images at different wavelengths that go undetected in single-bandwidth imaging sensors.

Pixxel pitched its hyperspectral imaging satellites to companies and government agencies where the data could be used to detect events and phenomena such as the otherwise invisible gas leaks, underground oil leaks, crop diseases and infestations, soil nutrient quality, and much more.

Through hyperspectral imaging, which goes deeper than a flat photograph, Pixxel is able to mark out areas on a satellite map using distinct colours in real time and identify a wide spectrum of patterns.

Pixxel’s hyperspectral cameras split reflected light into roughly 300 wavelengths, allowing satellites to detect information that conventional imaging systems cannot capture. The CEO compares it with medical imaging.

A normal camera is like looking at a patient with your eyes. An X-ray reveals what lies underneath. Hyperspectral imaging performs a similar function for the planet.

The technology can identify crop diseases before visible symptoms appear, detect pest infestations, locate underground oil leaks, identify methane emissions, measure nutrients in soil and distinguish minerals such as lithium and cobalt that otherwise appear identical in conventional satellite images.

When Pixxel started in 2019, no company had commercially launched a hyperspectral satellite. While a handful of players had announced similar plans, Pixxel became the first to put one into orbit. Over the past few years, more companies have entered the category, but Pixxel had already established an early lead.

Building that capability required developing much of the satellite in-house.

Ahmed said Pixxel designs the onboard computer, software, structural systems and hyperspectral camera internally, while sourcing only standard components such as sensors and actuators from external suppliers. Its Earth Observation Studio combines satellite imagery with AI models so users can query datasets in plain English instead of analysing raw satellite imagery themselves.

Government agencies use Pixxel’s imagery for agriculture, forestry, water management and environmental monitoring. Private enterprises rely on it for crop insurance, plantation management, infrastructure monitoring and environmental compliance.

Today, Pixxel operates six Firefly satellites in a sun-synchronous orbit roughly 550 km above Earth. Each Firefly satellite weighs about 50 kg, captures imagery at 5-metre resolution and records more than 135 spectral bands, allowing customers to revisit the same location every 24 hours.

Pixxel is equally focused on making satellite data easier to use. Instead of asking customers to interpret raw imagery, Pixxel’s software converts satellite data into insights that can be accessed through simple queries, making the technology useful even for organisations without deep expertise in remote sensing.

Up Next For Pixxel

The startup is already preparing for the next leap. Honeybee, its next-generation satellite platform, will increase the number of spectral bands to around 250 while extending coverage into the short-wave infrared spectrum. The first technology demonstrator, Honeybee Zero, is slated for launch later this year before the larger constellation follows.

There’s a clear jump here in terms of the tech. While Firefly captures visible and near-Infrared (VNIR) data across 135+ bands, Honeybee expands into short-wave Infrared (SWIR) wavelengths with around 250 total bands. 

The company’s Firefly constellation targets general vegetation health and water monitoring applications through the data, while Honeybee is expected to unlock deep mineral exploration, advanced soil composition, and precise greenhouse gas tracking. This means a whole new enterprise class that Pixxel can target. 

Alongside that, the startup is working on India’s National Earth Observation Constellation under a public-private partnership with the Indian government. The project extends beyond hyperspectral imaging and includes optical as well as synthetic aperture radar satellites.

Pixxel’s growth has mirrored the transformation of India’s private space industry over the past few years. Incidentally, in 2024, the government opened up 100% foreign investment in spacetech through the automatic route for certain segments.

This gave a massive impetus to a new generation of startups such as Skyroot, Pixxel, Dhruva Space and Agnikul Cosmos, among others, with many of them building launch vehicles and platforms, and creating solutions for Earth observation and satellite communications.

Skyroot became the first private Indian company to place a rocket into orbit in July 2026, while Agnikul Cosmos is working on 3D printed rocket engines.

Bellatrix Aerospace is developing space propulsion systems, Digantara is tracking objects in orbit and GalaxEye is working on multi-sensor Earth observation satellites. Together these startups are putting India on the global space map.

There are some overlaps here between startups and their focus areas, but Pixxel has looked to carve out a niche of building satellites for hyperspectral imaging.

On the business side, though, a lot more clarity is needed. According to the startup’s financial statements, operating revenue touched ₹39.3 Cr in FY25, compared to ₹30.6 Cr in the previous year, and net loss widened to ₹30.8 Cr from ₹20.4 Cr.

The CEO, however, emphasised that these numbers do not present the complete picture, noting that the startup has expanded significantly in FY26. He also noted that Pixxel generates a substantial portion of its revenue through subsidiaries in the US, Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Australia markets, which are not captured in the India entity’s filings.

That remains one blind spot, though as the company matures, a clearer picture is expected to emerge on the business side, just as it has done on the product side.

For Ahmed, though, the driving force behind Pixxel has remained the same since his college days. He believes that the problem of what satellites can observe from space will continue to be more and more relevant especially because of how that data is being leveraged today. As humanity deals with the threat of climate change, Pixxel’s technology can indeed solve some of the biggest problems staring us in the face.

Edited By Nikhil Subramaniam
Creative: Varshita Srivastava

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