Early stage Venture capital (VC) fund, growX has announced a partial exit from space tech startup Pixxel. The exit delivered a 17x multiple on invested capital (MOIC) and a 68 per cent internal rate of return (IRR) over a 5.5-year holding period.
The fund had invested about ₹11 crore across various rounds in the Space-tech company.
Launched in 2019, growX Fund I, is a $25 million early-stage fund backing 17 B2B technology startups across sectors like DeepTech, FinTech, SaaS, and HealthTech.
Its portfolio includes companies such as Bellatrix Aerospace, Progcap, Zuddl, AdvantageClub.ai, CynLr, Lightspeed Photonics, and 4baseCare.
“When we invested in Pixxel in 2019, there was no playbook for DeepTech in India – no exits, no benchmarks, and certainly no roadmap for building a full-stack SpaceTech company. But the idea was audacious, and the clarity was unmistakable – from a 2050 vision to the first 50 hires already mapped out. This wasn’t a category you could hedge or pivot out of. We believed in the ambition and the discipline behind it. Watching that conviction translate into real outcomes is deeply meaningful.” said Sheetal Bahl, Partner at growX Ventures Fund and Merak Ventures.
Pixxel has raised $95 million across nine rounds, including a $24 million Series B extension in December 2024 from GIC, Google, Radical Ventures and Seraphim. The company, specialising in hyperspectral imaging technology has piloted its solutions across key sectors such as agriculture, mining, energy among others. It expects to commercially deploy these solutions once its mini-constellation of six satellites is operational later this year.
(Inputs from BL Intern Rohan Das)
Published on May 20, 2025
