The IIT Bombay Duo Who Reinvented the Ceiling Fan

Manoj Meena turned down a job as a scientist at ISRO. He wanted to fix ceiling fans instead.

That decision, alongside co-founder Shibam Das, started Atomberg in 2012, out of a small room near IIT Bombay's incubation center. The name didn't come from any deep meaning. The founders just thought it sounded cool.

Their insight was simple and had been sitting in plain sight for decades. Indian ceiling fans still ran on old induction motors that wasted enormous amounts of electricity. Swap that for a Brushless DC motor, and a fan could run on up to 65% less power, last longer, and even come with a remote.

Getting there wasn't smooth. Atomberg started out selling to B2B clients, and one early order of 500 fans nearly sank the company on cash flow alone. Around 2015-2016, they pivoted to consumers, launching the Gorilla and later the Renesa fan series through Amazon and Flipkart.

They also learned something most appliance startups miss: big-ticket purchases still need a showroom. People want to see and touch a fan before they buy one, so Atomberg built an offline retail network across hundreds of Indian cities, investing as much in installation and after-sales service as in the product itself.

That engineering-first instinct followed them into new categories. Mixer grinders, water purifiers, water heaters, and smart locks all carry the same BLDC-driven logic: solve a real energy or performance gap, not just add a feature.

Thirteen years after Meena chose fans over ISRO, Atomberg crosses ₹1,000 crore in annual revenue, built almost entirely on an idea nobody thought was worth chasing.