India witnessed almost 2,00,000 incidents of forest fires in 2024. 

The Arctic polar icecaps are likely to melt by 2050.

A third of the world’s agricultural land is already considered ‘degraded’. 

Bu what if eyes in the sky could spot climate bugs befofe they become calamities? 

Awais Ahmed, Indian spacetech’s brightest young star, CEO and founder of Pixxel, is doing just that. With next-gen satellites.  

Meet the Space Photographer

Imagine an observatory in space that could gauge the planet’s health, its ailing parts, its diseased limbs, its impending sicknesses well before they happen. It’s what Ahmed is building with Pixxel – a health monitor for the planet.

Born on the outskirts of Bangalore, Ahmed was fascinated by space from an early age. But it wasn’t until he joined BITS Pilani, one of India’s premier engineering institutes that he truly took to stringing his dreams to the stars. While in college, Ahmed led a team of 30 students in a competition to build a pod for SpaceX’s Hyperloop competition. A guided tour of the company’s awe-inspiring facility – by Elon Musk himself  – and Ahmed was sold on the idea of working in space tech. 

A planetary CCTV in space

Conventional wisdom dictates that if you want to do something in the context of the space industry, India’s government run agency ISRO is your only bet. But Ahmed was willing to place another one. He turned to satellites, and the idea of hyperspectral imaging. Compared to normal imaging, hyperspectral images provide a spectrum of data based on the intensity of light reflected back from distant objects. Think of an image that also serves as an X-ray. Or a giant microscope in the sky, capable of looking underneath the surface of things: soil nutrients, tree bark health, ice cover, oil spills, mineral reserves and so on. An ongoing, real time full-body-checkup of the planet. 

A lot of Ahmed’s ideas, self-admittedly, come from science fiction. He wants to, for example, mine asteroids for minerals, capture solar energy and beam it down to the earth,  is confident “humans will live in space” and that at some point “we have to get out of our solar system”. If SpaceX is building the vehicles to take us to other planets, Ahmed wants to be the guy to provide the tools to keep us there. “Obviously”, he argues,  “you wouldn’t come back and mine the earth to build in space”. 

Space. Speculation. Solution

Pointing cameras at the earth is one thing, but building an inter-galactic logistics company is a different ball game. It would take astounding sums of money, more than a bunch of regulatory loopholes, coaxing critics, kickstarting a non-existent private space industry in India and maybe even a bit of sci-fi madness. But much like his personal motto Cupitor Impossibilium – seeker of impossible things – Ahmed is fascinated by the impossible. 

Space will ultimately be privatised. Some argue that it’s the only way it can be democratised. It’s simply a question of what part Ahmed and those inspired by him will play in it.

At SYNAPSE 2025, Ahmed will paint a picture of the Indian space tech industry. Pose climate change as an intergalactic problem. Make his case for more eyes the sky. And describe what makes for a young Indian techenterpreneur. 

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