How a mechanical engineer and his IIT-Bombay friends used AI and IoT to make tractors smart, profitable, and ended up driving M&M's farming vertical
May 2015, Mumbai. It started with a passionate, resounding and clarion call: Kar lete hain, kood jaate hain (let’s do it, let’s take the plunge). After working in a well-funded startup for over six months, three young IIT-Bombay grads realised they were misfits. And the reasons were unconventional. “We saw how a startup must not be run,” recalls Pushkar Limaye, who hails from a family of chartered accountants in Mumbai, spent the first 10 years of his life in a 150 square feet house shared by eight inhabitants, and completed his higher secondary education from a Marathi-medium school. “I wanted to continue with my family tradition of CA, but my father advised me against it,” he smiles. His friends were preparing for IIT, he too did, and was pleasantly surprised with the ease with which he cleared. “There was no pressure. I joined IIT-Bombay in 2010,” he adds.