IIT Bombay duo's electric farm machine earns ₹70 lakh in 15 months

Two IIT Bombay graduates left big corporate jobs to fix a very ground-level problem: Indian farmers are short of labour and spend more and more on diesel. Their Pune-based startup, Balisto Agritech, now makes electric farm machines and has reported ₹70 lakh in revenue in about 15 months.

From Harvard, UPSC and Swiggy to the farm

Aishwarya Ramakrishnan and Kedar Gokhale are from IIT Bombay's 2010 batch. After IIT, Aishwarya did an MBA at Harvard Business School and worked in Mahindra Group's farm equipment business. She also co-founded the education NGO Avanti Fellows.

Kedar cleared the UPSC exam twice, but did not get the cadre he wanted and went back to the corporate world. He rose to Vice President (Operations) at Swiggy.

Driven by an interest in climate and agriculture, the two old classmates teamed up in February 2023. The company was registered in February 2024 as Higher Orbit Agritech Pvt Ltd (the brand was earlier called Orbit AgriTech), and later raised pre-seed funding from angel investors.

The machine: Balisto 130 Pro

After meeting local farmers, the founders saw three big problems: shortage of labour, physical strain from traditional tools, and the rising cost of diesel and expensive machines.

Their answer is the Balisto 130 Pro, a 13 HP electric multipurpose power tiller. It handles ploughing, weeding and earthing-up in crops like sugarcane, cotton, paddy, turmeric and ginger, with an adjustable working width of 2 to 5 feet.

• Two detachable 4.6 kWh LFP lithium-ion batteries
• A smart control unit that adjusts speed and torque to the soil
• Low vibration and an emergency safety lever for the operator
• IoT sensors that send machine data to a server for remote monitoring and servicing

Dealers, not D2C

Instead of selling directly online, Balisto chose a dealer-led model so farmers get local after-sales service. It has 15 dealers in Maharashtra, and also reaches hundreds of farmers through rental agri-entrepreneurs who rent the machines out.

Next, the founders plan remote-controlled machines, attachments such as sprayers and trolleys, and a battery-as-a-service model.

Sources: Navbharat Times (29 Oct 2026), Startuppedia, founders' public profiles. Revenue figure as reported; not independently verified.