It all began 50 years ago with a hovercraft. As part of a semester project at the College of Engineering, Guindy, T R Kesavan, constructed a hovercraft with two of his students.
The hovercraft, which became a talked-about project in the early 1970s and was mentioned by his first company L&T as well, is a sign of Kesavan’s everlasting enthusiasm for technology. Today, at 70, he sees himself supporting farming 2. 0 powered by precise engineering.
After 15 years with L&T and an abroad excursion of six years, Kesavan has been with Tractors and Farm Equipment (TAFE) since 1994. “I began in marketing, service and parts and then took over sales and marketing. Over the years, I managed product management as well,” he recalls. “And, I contributed to creating technologies connected to mechanisation and farmer-focused training too. ”
Led by chairman Mallika Srinivasan, TAFE has reinvented itself by extending goods and regions in the past two decades or so. The firm purchased Eicher’s tractor business in 2005, the Serbian tractor and agricultural equipment brand Industrija Masina I Traktora (IMT) in 2018, and the Indian interior systems division of French global automotive supplier Faurecia in December 2022. Today, it has established itself as India’s second biggest and the world’s third largest tractor maker.
TAFE’s development has fitted in seamlessly with the automation of India’s farmlands. Today, Kesavan brazenly labels himself a tech-evangelist. As the head of FICCI’s national agricultural committee and president of the Madras Chamber of Commerce & Industries, he thinks the farming of future will no longer be about big-is-beautiful, but more about smart-is-sustainable.
“India has long been taught that its tiny agricultural holdings are a disadvantage when it comes to mechanised farming, but the solutions of future will be precision-led owing to intelligent equipment,” he adds. “These need not be giant machines, they may be a plethora of little smart equipment that cultivate small land units yet speak to each other and share their information. ”
“Technology can assure every seed will grow, we can reduce down fertiliser consumption by half and spot-spray pesticides just when needed,” he adds. Technology (drones, robotics, artificial intelligence, sensors) will also aid boost productivity of electricity and water inputs. The subsequent crop, with fewer pesticides and less harm to the soil, will be healthier. “Technology can and will revolutionise the way we conduct agriculture,” adds Kesavan.
“The mechanisation equipment that we offer in the near future will be application driven and will be dependant on smart engineering,” adds Kesavan. “Tractors functioned as the prime mover to implements and now we’re talking about intelligent self-contained implements. ” These precise goods will incorporate high-end technologies like kinematics, sensing devices, drones, artificial intelligence, but at the heart it will still be all about excellent engineering. “Whatever India accomplishes in agriculture, more and more of it will be about clever engineering,” adds Kesavan.
That concentration on engineering is something that has stayed unaltered in Kesavan -from classroom to the corner office. As a young child, he opted to go for a pre-university engineering study only so he could dump social sciences. Ask him what his pastime is now and this industry veteran instantly replies: carpentry. As Indian farming switches gear to transfer over to the digital era, Kesavan is optimistic about what future would bring. “In FICCI we are dealing with 150 startups per year,” he continues.
“There are so many amazing technologies coming up – like Israel has invented a drone that can be powered by infra-red radiation. Ideas like that are the future. ” For TAFE and Kesavan, that future is today.
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