Yogesh grew up in Bamorikala, a remote village in the Baran district of Rajasthan. His father, a farmer, worked tirelessly on their field to provide for their family. But years of hard labour finally caught up to him when, in 2017, during Yogesh’s first year of college, his father’s back pain became too hard to bear. Yogesh decided to skip his first-year exams to come home and help his father with the crop.
Unfortunately, the long hours of working in the heat of the sun and the physical exertion of driving a tractor all day took a toll on Yogesh’s health and he fell sick. He quickly realised that he needed to do something to help his father with the hard labour.
An innovator at heart, Yogesh started thinking outside the box and came up with the idea of developing a driverless tractor. He started researching the technology online. But no matter where he looked, he was told that such a complex machine couldn’t be made in India. “Even my friends studying Polytechnique told me it was impossible.”
With no formal education in engineering, Yogesh embarked on the mission all by himself. Then, he pitched his innovation to his dad. “Papa straight up told me to drop my plan, it sounded nonsensical to him,” he recollects. But Yogesh somehow convinced him.
“Whenever Papa met his friends, they’d taunt and ridicule him, saying I’m wasting my time over nothing.” Over the course of 6 months that went into building the tractor, Yogesh failed 20 times. But he didn’t let the setbacks affect him and soon he completed his innovation.
“The villagers were speechless; they couldn’t believe the tractor was moving on its own! A few even made videos and my innovation went viral on social media.”
Today, Yogesh is in his final year of B. Tech and has patented his innovation. His father can operate the tractor from one corner of the farm and till the land with the help of a remote control. Yogesh was able to create something unique and help people, because he ignored the naysayers and focused on his goal!
Mahindra salutes the challenger spirit of people like Yogesh who remind us that with grit and determination, we can change the world and help the people around us #Rise.
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We can choose to let our problems define our destiny or we can choose to rise above every challenge and perceive them as steps towards greatness
Learning something new is a very fulfilling experience and there is a lesson we can learn from every problem and every person.
Food is a basic human right, but many still go hungry and this realization spurred Sana Arora to launch The Feed’em Movement in 2017, an initiative to help feed and mobilise the underprivileged. #PeopleWhoRise
