The Electrical Engineering student had spent his IIT Bombay years immersed in robotics and electronics, participating in competitions and working on technology projects.
ATOMBERG DID NOT START WITH A FANMeena founded Atomberg in 2012 and was later joined by fellow IIT Bombay alumnus Sibabrata Das in 2013.
The company was incubated at SINE, IIT Bombay, and the founders spent the first few years bootstrapping and taking up technology projects.
Meena's journey has brought him recognitions including the National Entrepreneurship Award, Forbes India 30 Under 30, Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 and IIT Bombay's Young Alumni Achievers Award.
advertisementDas has also featured on Forbes' 30 Under 30 lists and received the Young Alumnus Achiever Award from IIT Bombay.
Manoj Meena had already secured what looked like the perfect ending to his IIT Bombay journey.
An ISRO job was waiting for him after his final year. For his family in rural Rajasthan, the choice seemed obvious. A stable government job meant security and a settled future.
Meena chose something much less certain. He decided to build.
The Electrical Engineering student had spent his IIT Bombay years immersed in robotics and electronics, participating in competitions and working on technology projects. He had developed a belief that engineering should solve problems people actually face.
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Entrepreneurship, he realised, could give him the freedom to pursue that idea. His family did not immediately understand the decision. But Meena took the plunge.
The company he started would eventually become Atomberg Technologies.
ATOMBERG DID NOT START WITH A FAN
Meena founded Atomberg in 2012 and was later joined by fellow IIT Bombay alumnus Sibabrata Das in 2013.
There was no grand consumer startup plan. The company was incubated at SINE, IIT Bombay, and the founders spent the first few years bootstrapping and taking up technology projects.
They worked on data acquisition systems, motor control, process control and other engineering problems for institutions and research organisations.
They also tried different ideas. Vehicle tracking was one. Other projects came and went. The founders were often doing everything themselves, from building technology to visiting customers and fixing devices.
Those first years were a prolonged search for a scalable idea. They had the engineering skills. They just had not found the right problem.
FOUR YEARS OF SEARCHING FINALLY LED TO A FAN
The breakthrough came in 2015.
While working on motors, power electronics and control systems, the founders began studying the ceiling fan market.
The ordinary ceiling fan had barely changed in the way that mattered most to consumers: electricity consumption.
A conventional fan typically used around 75 to 80 watts. The team developed a brushless DC, or BLDC, motor that could deliver similar output at around 28 watts.
In practical terms, Atomberg said its fans could consume up to 65% less power than conventional fans.
That was the breakthrough.
The founders had found a way to take their engineering capabilities and apply them to an appliance found in millions of Indian homes.
Atomberg launched its first fan under the Gorilla brand in 2015.
Initially, the company supplied fans to institutional buyers. In 2016, it made the difficult transition towards consumers.
And that created an entirely new problem.
'WHO WILL BUY YOUR FANS?'
Atomberg was trying to enter a market dominated by established companies such as Bajaj, Crompton, Havells and Usha. It also wanted to sell fans online, despite consumers traditionally buying them through physical retailers.
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Investors questioned whether an unknown startup could compete with companies that had decades of brand recognition and distribution.
The founders kept pitching. And kept hearing no.
According to Forbes India, Atomberg's operating revenue had reached 37 crore in FY19, and it was producing around 1,000 fans a day. The business was growing, but its capital needs were growing too.
Then came 2019.
ATOMBERG HAD ABOUT A MONTH LEFT
This was the point where the startup's survival was genuinely in doubt.
Das later recalled that Atomberg had an extremely short runway left. Salaries were being delayed, vendors were demanding payments and funding discussions were going nowhere.
Years of work were suddenly at risk.
In his account to Forbes India, Das recalled the emotional toll of that period, including reaching a point where the founders wondered whether they would have to wind down the company.
Then a new possibility appeared. The founders came across news about a newly formed fund and reached out despite having little reason to expect a response.
They got one.
The fund moved quickly. Within weeks, Atomberg had secured the capital it needed to continue.
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The startup that had been close to shutting down had another chance. This time, it was ready to scale.
THE FAN BECAME A TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM
Atomberg's biggest evolution was that it stopped being just an energy-efficiency story.
The BLDC motor allowed the company to make its fans more compact. Over time, it added remote controls, LED interfaces, Wi-Fi connectivity and app-based controls.
The company's product design also changed.
Its Renaissance range introduced smaller motors and a more minimalist appearance, helping Atomberg differentiate itself from conventional ceiling fans.
The founders have said the product gradually evolved from an energy-efficient appliance into a smart appliance.
The same technology capabilities also created opportunities outside fans.
Atomberg eventually moved into categories such as mixer grinders and water purifiers, while exploring applications for its motor and electronics expertise in areas including air-conditioning components and drone motors.
FROM IIT BOMBAY'S INCUBATOR TO Rs 1,000 CRORE
The company that once struggled to convince investors eventually became a major Indian consumer technology brand.
Atomberg's operating revenue reached about 958 crore in FY25, while its total income crossed 1,000 crore.
Meena's journey has brought him recognitions including the National Entrepreneurship Award, Forbes India 30 Under 30, Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 and IIT Bombay's Young Alumni Achievers Award.
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Das has also featured on Forbes' 30 Under 30 lists and received the Young Alumnus Achiever Award from IIT Bombay.
But the most interesting part of Meena's story began long before those awards.
It began in rural Rajasthan, where access to electricity was limited and power mattered enormously to everyday life.
Years later, the IIT Bombay engineer who had walked away from a secure ISRO career was building technology around one of the biggest everyday uses of electricity in Indian homes.
Atomberg did not emerge from one perfect idea.
It came after four years of searching, failed experiments, funding rejections and one very ordinary question:
What if the fan could simply use less electricity?
That question became the foundation of a company that would eventually cross 1,000 crore in total income.
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