India, June 7 -- Startup Mantra | Agro-tech

STRAP: Shailesh Modak, an IT engineer who got into farming, has pivoted from beekeeping to growing greens hydroponically to teaching people how to do soil-less farming, to saffron to cordyceps mushrooms, and now plans on setting up a hi-tech AI-based sericulture unit

Pune

Shailesh Modak always had an impulse to do something different, something meaningful that could benefit society. Even at the height of a successful IT career that took him around the globe, his thoughts often drifted back to farming.

"I always believed that instead of people going to the farm, the farm should come to the people," he says.

With that belief guiding him, Shailesh dove into research and discovered that soil-le...