: Techie Designs Customised Farm Equipment in Cattle Shed, Earns Rs 2.5 Lakh/Month #IndiaNEWS #Agriculture When the COVID-19 pandemic spread across India around March 2020, the multinational company

Techie Designs Customised Farm Equipment in Cattle Shed, Earns Rs 2.5 Lakh/Month #IndiaNEWS #Agriculture
When the COVID-19 pandemic spread across India around March 2020, the multinational company where Bengaluru-based Santosh Patil worked was among the first of many who bore the brunt of layoffs. By mid-2020, out of the 460 software engineers the company employed, only 200 remained.
In fact, the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy estimates that 122 million people have lost their jobs in the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These include salaried employees, small traders, and wage labourers, among others.
Santosh, who hails from Kolhapur in Maharashtra, was riddled with anxiety over the situation. “Most of our clients belonged to Europe. As the European countries faced the crisis before India and on a wider scale, we felt its economic effects in our company as well,??? the 29-year-old tells The Better India.
“I felt the need to have a backup plan in case I’d be laid off as well,??? he adds.
To become financially resilient, in December 2020, Santosh started a farm equipment workshop called Airball Enterprises in his family’s cowshed. The company sells customised farm equipment under the brand ‘Shivtej’, and earns around Rs 2. 5 lakh a month.
A backup plan
Chaff cutter
“When I returned to Kolhapur owing to work from home, I started looking for solutions for alternate income,??? says Santosh, who hails from a family with a farming background.
Here, he noticed that all the farm equipment shops in his area were closed, and farmers were having a hard time finding equipment such as chaff cutters, threshers, crop cutting machines and others. So Santosh decided to work on this gap.
Santosh says he started by designing a milking machine for cattle, compressor, fertilising equipment, and sugarcane pod cutter, among others. However, the startup did not offer the same conventional equipment. Instead, it is modified and improvised according to the needs of the customers.
“I used software such as AutoCAD to design and include features in the equipment based on the customers’ request. I also modified the designs as per their needs and made the machines compact, thus increasing their efficiency,??? he adds. He also offers repair works and spare parts for farm equipment such as belts, pulleys, gears, motors and others.
Tanaji Patil is one such farmer who benefitted from Santosh’s enterprise. “I wanted a chaff cutter for the farm. “The conventional machine in the market throws the processed material in front of the unit. But owing to space constraints, I needed a machine that could collect the fodder at its base,??? he says.
Tanaji adds that he came to know about the customised equipment manufactured by Santosh’s company through a few farmers in the vicinity .

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