For decades, ambition in India came with a suitcase. The unspoken rule was clear: if you wanted to build a future, you had to migrate. Whether it was tech in Bengaluru, finance in Mumbai, policy in Delhi, or manufacturing in Chennai, the roadmap was always the same—move to a metro and make your mark. But somewhere between the steady rise of the internet and a generational shift in mindset, a new story is being written—not in the high-rises of megacities, but in the quieter bylanes of India’s Tier II and Tier III towns.
A transformative shift is silently reshaping the landscape. Once, metropolitan skylines hummed with CEOs gliding through traffic in sleek Mercedes and Audis, draped in Armani and Tom Ford, wrists adorned with Movado or Patek Philippe, luggage stamped with Louis Vuitton and Rimowa. They spoke in billions in glass-and-steel boardrooms, savoured sunset cocktails at five-star resorts, lounged on sun-drenched beaches, and swiped effortlessly into exclusive clubs, gala dinners, and invite-only art auctions.
The small-town CEO doesn’t come with this glittering baggage. There’s no fleet of chauffeur-driven cars, no closets bursting with designer labels, no passport full of luxury stamps. What they do have is a deeply familiar ecosystem, a universe of untapped talent, hidden networks, and grassroots opportunities waiting to be discovered. In these corners of the country, innovation isn’t dictated by trend or ticker; it thrives in the ingenuity of people who’ve long been overlooked. It’s in this landscape that Madhavi Jadhav’s story finds resonance.
In 2017, Jadhav, now CEO of Atman—a mental health platform offering free counselling to students—was confronted with a question from her teenage niece: “All my friends at school have boyfriends. I’m in the five per cent that doesn’t. Should I have one too?” Jadhav turned the moment into a mission. She founded Atman right in her hometown of Satara, Maharashtra. “We chose Satara because the costs were lower and the investment more manageable,” she says.
This rise of small-town entrepreneurship is no coincidence. Three powerful forces are converging: internet penetration reaching even the remotest panchayats, the normalisation of remote and hybrid work, and a new wave of aspiration among small-town consumers. Affordable smartphones and digital payments have unlocked access to markets once unimaginable. Cloud platforms let founders build world-class operations from Tier III towns. And India’s hinterland consumers, once thought to be only price-conscious, are now demanding better, and are willing to pay for it.
Bindu Nishal, VP of Agri Innovations & One Health at IKP Knowledge Park, which has supported startups across 102 cities in India, explains, “We have seen a strong spirit of entrepreneurship in these cities since they tackle problems at the grassroots level.” A TiE 2025 report predicts that with consistent policy and infrastructure support, Tier II and Tier III cities could create 50 million jobs and contribute up to 15 per cent of India’s GDP by 2035. With internet penetration crossing 55 per cent in 2025—more than half of India’s 1.4 billion people are now online—founders in small towns can dream big from day one. Magsaysay award winner Harish Hande, who founded SELCO India in 1995 by taking solar power to the villages of Mangaluru, says, “These startups know the problem they are trying to solve.”
And everywhere you look, there’s the same clever use of digital scaffolding. As investor-operator Anup Pai puts it, “There are a 1,000 reasons why a startup will fail. There is one reason why it will succeed. Focus on that one reason.” For these founder-CEOs, that “one reason” is often proximity to the problem—paired with a sharp instinct for using technology to leap beyond it.
For co-founder and CEO Shyam Ratan, Agra is more than just the city of the Taj. Its lower costs and solid connectivity have been a strategic advantage. “A researcher once asked if, being Agra-based, our startup ‘makes marksheets’,” Ratan recalls with a laugh. Rather than be discouraged, the team turned the stereotype into fuel—mentoring local talent, forging international partnerships, and proving that innovation need not be confined to Delhi, Bengaluru, or Mumbai.
Though the road is not entirely smooth, small-town CEOs are proving that innovation does not need a metro pin code, that a good idea can rise from Satara’s crowded lanes, from Nashik’s vineyards, from Raipur’s small offices and Agra’s workshops. They are stitching together grants, programmes, and digital visibility into new strengths. The revolution is already here, and it no longer wears a suit or sits in a corner office.
Drone Dreams
In Roorkee, where the Ganga meanders past the iconic IIT campus, a bold vision for India’s space future is quietly taking shape. IndoplanetX Space Vault & Research (ISVRx) is at the forefront, developing hydrogen fuel cells for drones, experimenting with semi-cryogenic engines, and filing patents that could redefine the country’s aerospace landscape.
Over 2,000 students have already engaged with its 15-plus space-awareness programmes, while more than 10 educational and research institutions have joined hands with ISVRx to nurture innovation. “We face multiple challenges, including funding constraints, difficulty in building a skilled team, and overcoming certain local mindset limitations,” says founder-CEO Ankit Kumar. “However, these challenges are balanced by the fact that people here have big dreams and a strong focus on working towards them.” Despite limited resources, ISVRx continues to push boundaries. Its semi-cryogenic engine aims to make rocket propulsion more efficient, while its hydrogen-powered drones promise longer flight times and greener alternatives to conventional battery systems.
By combining cutting-edge technology with education and collaboration, ISVRx is creating a space ecosystem in a city better known for its rivers and engineering college.
Agri Alchemists
Down south, brothers Satyajit and Ajinkya Hange made a bold pivot that few would dare. They left stable careers in MNC banking—Satyajit with stints at Citicorp, DBS, and Kotak Life, and Ajinkya at HDFC and HSBC—to return to their ancestral village of Bhodani, near Pune, and launch Two Brothers Organic Farms in 2012. From just 32 acres of family land, the venture has grown to over 1,000 acres, practicing regenerative agriculture, training 20,000 farmers, and shipping produce to more than 20 Indian states and 60 countries.
Funding arrived in waves: a `14.5 crore pre-Series A in 2023 from Akshay Kumar and Virender Sehwag, followed by a `58.25 crore Series A in June 2024 led by Zerodha’s Rainmatter, with Raju Chekuri also participating.
“The consumer buys with their eyes first, and then with their tongue,” Satyajit, CEO, says with a grin, summarising years of mandi wisdom. For the brothers, digital isn’t just a sales channel—it’s a bridge. “It’s not just about selling,” he says. Their website connects them directly to customers worldwide, bypassing middlemen and allowing them to “educate, inspire, and build trust with people who may never set foot in Bhodani.”
Today, Two Brothers Organic Farms is more than a farm; it’s a model of purpose-driven entrepreneurship, marrying traditional wisdom with modern technology to make an impact that stretches far beyond Pune.
Flavour Factory
In 2018, Raipur brothers Akash and Ashish Agrawalla founded ZOFF Foods—short for “Zone of Fresh Foods”—with a bold idea: revive the forgotten aroma of Indian spices using zero-human-touch processing and cool grinding technology. Early skeptics were silenced when a Delhi retailer toured their fully automated, dust-free plant and came away impressed. ZOFF now employs a workforce that is 70 per cent from Chhattisgarh, with senior leaders choosing Raipur over metro cities. Its spices travel far beyond the state, reaching homes across India and even the Middle East. Running a business from a Tier II city, CEO Akash admits, has its hurdles—limited packaging vendors, testing labs, and slower freight timelines—but the benefits are clear: lower costs, access to fresh raw materials, and a community that celebrates their growth as its own.
The company has recently diversified into seasonings and ready-to-cook products with “5-Minute Gravies” and “1-Minute Marinades,” now sold in over 400 Reliance Retail stores nationwide. With revenue crossing `53 crore and targets of `100 crore in sight, ZOFF is gearing up for an aggressive expansion and even an IPO within the next four to five years. Akash calls it both a joy and a trial to run a business from a small town. “There are a lot of infrastructure gaps from high-grade packaging vendors, advanced testing labs, to specialised suppliers being scarce or freight costs and delivery timelines being longer compared to metro-based operations,” he admits. But the rewards, he insists, are undeniable—lower costs, raw materials close at hand, and a community that roots for you as if your win is theirs.
Waste Warrior
During the anxious days of Covid-19, Noureen Aysha noticed something alarming in Calicut: sanitation workers who once collected garbage daily now came only once a week. She worried about sanitary waste piling up and spreading disease. That concern sparked FemiSafe, a platform offering safe, sustainable, and affordable menstrual and personal wellness products. Today, Aysha runs the venture from Cochin as co-founder and CEO, earning recognition as Kerala’s Social Impactor of the Year.
“For us, the issues are retaining talent, having a supporting ecosystem, and scaling up what we do,” she says, reflecting on the challenges of building a mission-driven startup outside Bengaluru or Gurugram. Yet FemiSafe has defied the odds, raising over `4.3 crore across two funding rounds, with investors including Kerala Angel Network, Lunar Family Office, and BeyondTeQ Ventures.
Beyond products, FemiSafe focuses on awareness and breaking taboos around menstruation. Its Pad-Free Kerala campaign has distributed over 750 menstrual cups to students, paired with educational sessions.
By blending social impact with entrepreneurial grit, FemiSafe is proving that innovation and capital can flourish even in unexpected corners of India, empowering women in Tier II and Tier III cities and nurturing a culture of menstrual health and dignity.
Crop Whisperer
It’s about rewriting what ambition looks like in the world’s most populous country. In this new India, you don’t have to leave home to chase a dream. You can build it right where you are. And that is what Mukund Choudhary, CEO of Trebirth, a Nashik-based agri-tech startup, is doing.
In the middle of a quiet vineyard in Nashik, a farmer stood frozen, staring at a radar screen that had just revealed something he could hardly believe—an unusual activity inside a grape stem that looked flawless on the outside. The plant appeared perfectly healthy. He chuckled in disbelief, saying, “There’s no way something is inside this plant.” But the X-ray scan told another story—a stem borer, burrowed deep within, invisible to the naked eye. The farmer whispered, “If this tool can see what even my eyes cannot, it will save my entire crop.” Choudhary is proving that the future of entrepreneurship doesn’t just belong to Bengaluru’s glass towers or Mumbai’s buzzing co-working spaces.
Grants from government and CSR programmes, along with equity funding “more than `1 crore,” turned years of field trials into a viable business. A top-12 finish at the Qualcomm Design in India Challenge gave them national validation. But Choudhary’s real breakthrough wasn’t just technological—it was about where he chose to build. When an investor asked why he hadn’t moved to a metro, he smiled and said, “Because this is where the pests are.”
Village Vanguard
It’s the same story in Areekode, Kerala. Twenty-nine-year-old Ramees Ali has built Interval Learning, an e-learning platform he co-founded in 2018 that now reaches over 40,000 students across 150 cities. Even Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman lauded the startup in 2023, celebrating its remarkable growth. “Through Interval Learning, over 10,000 tutors have found a platform to earn, grow, and inspire. What makes this even more special is that 99 per cent of them are women, and an incredible 72 per cent come from Tier III and Tier IV villages, places where opportunities were once scarce, and dreams often stayed unspoken,” says Ali with quiet pride.
Interval Learning, too, became a testament to this shift. In 2023, the company secured $2,50,000 from Dubai-based angel investors. A `1 crore loan from KSIDC and a co-working slot under Kerala Startup Mission’s LEAP programme gave the fledgling company a home and, perhaps more importantly, the confidence to ask investors for their belief. Geography, once a stubborn wall, is now just another line on a map.
Culinary Code
In Mallur, Kolar district, Dr Jalachari Ella is quietly transforming Indian culinary traditions with science through her venture, Ella Foods. As CEO, she leads a team that blends innovation with heritage, creating products that are both flavourful and health-conscious.
Ella Foods uses cryogenic grinding to process spices at ultra-low temperatures, locking in their essential oils and aromas—resulting in richer flavour and more vibrant colours than conventional methods. Their pickles undergo natural fermentation with low-sodium salt, cutting sodium content by up to 40 per cent while promoting gut-friendly probiotics.
Beyond taste, the company prioritises safety and nutrition. Advanced techniques like cold pasteurisation reduce microbial load by 99 per cent, preserving nutrients and ensuring every product meets high-quality standards.
Through this fusion of tradition and technology, Dr Ella is redefining how Indian foods can be both authentic and modern, offering consumers a taste of heritage that doesn’t compromise on health.