Deepinder Goyal in talks to invest in Pixxel’s latest fundraise of over $55 million

Awais Ahmed, founder and CEO of Pixxel and Kshitij Khandelwal, founder and CTO

• Deepinder Goyal to invest $25 million in Pixxel's latest funding round
• Pixxel aims to raise $55-60 million, possibly upsizing to $80-100 million
• This will be Pixxel's largest funding round to date

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Deepinder Goyal, the founder and group chief executive officer of food and grocery major Eternal (formerly Zomato), is in the advanced stages of investing in Pixxel’s latest funding round, people aware of the developments told Moneycontrol, as an increasing number of investors show an appetite for backing space-tech startups.

How much money is Pixxel raising?

Pixxel, a space tech startup and an operator of hyperspectral imaging satellites which provides Earth observation data and analytics, is raising about $55-60 million and already has commitments for most of the fundraise.

How much money is Goyal personally investing in Pixxel? 

“Of the planned fundraise, Deepinder is personally investing around $25 million (around Rs 225 crore) in Pixxel and the rest $30 million or so (about Rs 270 crore) will come from existing investors,” one of the persons cited above said.

Pixxel is currently backed by Glade Brook, Lightspeed, Google, Blume Ventures, Athera Venture Partners, Aditya Birla Ventures and others.

What will Pixxel’s total funding round size be?

“While the commitments for a $55-60 million (around Rs 550-600 crore) fundraise are already in, talks are still ongoing and Pixxel might end up upsizing the round to around $80-100 million, if it decides to negotiate with some more investors, including a few external names,” a second source said.

To be sure, negotiations are still on and it is likely that the deal contours change slightly over the coming weeks.

Once complete, this will be Pixxel’s largest funding round to date. The company has so far raised over $90 million from a slew of investors since being founded by Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal in 2019.

Pixxel and Goyal did not reply to Moneycontrol’s queries.

Goyal’s latest investment:

For Goyal, a bet on Pixxel would mark yet another fresh investment in a new-age startup. More recently, Goyal invested $20 million personally into LAT Aerospace, an aviation company he started along with a former colleague Surobhi Das.

He also invested in Continue, a research company and is also raising fresh funds to the tune of $55 million for Temple, a wearable devices company he started, Moneycontrol had exclusively reported. Continue, Temple, Eternal and LAT Aerospace are all companies he runs and all four are unrelated to each other.

This will, however, be his first investment in a deep tech, space tech startup at a time when several funds are betting on the space.

How many space tech startups have raised money in the previous months?

Over the past months, space tech startups like Agnikul Cosmos and Digantara have raised larger rounds, of about $17 million and $50 million respectively, from Reliance, 360 One, Advenza Global Limited and other marquee names.

Other new-age space tech companies like Ulook, Trishul Space and Manastu have all raised fresh funds from GrowX, InfoEdge Ventures, IAN Angel Fund, Capital A and several others as the deep tech ecosystem matures and shows promising results.