Bengaluru, November 03: Space-tech startup Pixxel’s announcement of setting up a new US subsidiary, Pixxel Federal came under the center of controversy given the sensitive nature of the domain Pixxel operates in. Although Pixxel remains Indian owned and operated, significant private equity investment in the company fed criticism as the company was accused of ‘being bought by American PE’.
The founder Awais Ahmed’s Muslim identity was also used here, as many accused him of being a ‘traitor’ to the country. Besides this, his co founder Kshitij Khandelwal has also received threats following the news.
“I will not stand by while lies are spread about a company we’ve spent eight years building, or while the extraordinary efforts of 300+ Indians who have gone above and beyond to design, build, launch and operate Indian satellites are undermined by baseless insinuations,” Awais said in his response through an article on X.
‘We incorporated a US entity too, a few months after our Indian entity, to serve American and international customers. And we do it proudly too as Indian designed and developed technology is being used by some of the most sophisticated customers in the world. It certainly won’t be our last international entity either. We intend to build a global space company rooted in Indian engineering. That means selling Indian technology worldwide, hiring internationally, establishing local entities where required, and complying with each country’s laws,” he further explained.
Pixxel remains a private company, and has plans to go public, but such smear campaigns do not help India’s aim to become a global technology giant. Selective interpretation of corporate filings and passing off speculation as established facts only harm India’s reputation, he explained.
Though such an announcement wouldn’t have made much of a difference for any other company, the sensitive nature of its operations and the fact that it has received millions of dollars in funding from private equity players has been one of the reasons for the accusations. With the tensions prevailing with Iran, the US restricted Plant Labs from publishing high resolution imagery of the West Asia region, and such diktats could be a cause of concern for Pixxel’s operations.
Though the Indian and US operations are expected to remain independent of one another, concerns with data security and sovereignty remain and that’s one of the biggest risks that Awais and his team at Pixxel will have to address sooner than later.
