Jaisimha Rao
Founder & CEO
Robotics, AgriTech, RPA
Bengaluru, India
Listen to Jaisimha’s Podcast!
Jaisimha Rao is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Niqo Robotics, an agricultural technology company developing AI-powered robots for precision farming. Based in Bengaluru, Niqo is the first company in Asia to commercialize green-on-green AI spot spraying, with a footprint now spanning India, the United States, Australia and Africa.
A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Jaisimha began his career in finance. He spent six years at BlackRock in New York, where he rose to Vice President and managed multi-billion-dollar portfolios through the 2008 financial crisis. The discipline and global perspective gained on Wall Street shaped his entrepreneurial approach to problem-solving.
In 2013, after returning to India and spending time on his family’s coffee farm near Bengaluru, Jaisimha saw first-hand the limitations of traditional farming practices. Critical decisions were often made based on intuition rather than data, and heavy reliance on chemicals and manual labor was both costly and unsustainable. This inspired him to launch a robotics venture that could bring precision, affordability and sustainability to agriculture.
He founded the company in 2015 under the name TartanSense, with a small R&D team working on agricultural imaging and robotics. After years of experimentation, the breakthrough came when the team shifted from building standalone robots to retrofit systems that could enhance tractors already in use. In 2022, the company launched its first commercial product in India, RoboSpray, followed by RoboThinner in the United States. The company rebranded as Niqo Robotics in 2023 to reflect its evolution from a research-focused lab to a global commercial player.
Under Jaisimha’s leadership, Niqo has raised $21 million from leading investors including Blume Ventures, FMC Ventures, Omnivore, Bidra Innovation Ventures, Fulcrum Global Capital and BEENEXT. The company holds 12 patents, has deployed more than 250 AI cameras, and has treated over 140,000 acres worldwide.
Jaisimha’s vision is to build a full-stack robotics platform for agriculture that covers sowing, spraying, thinning and harvesting. His journey reflects the convergence of financial discipline,
engineering expertise and agricultural heritage, and a belief that innovation for smallholder farmers in India can scale to transform global farming systems.
Jaisimha Rao is also featured on our premiere Features Page, and you can read the Podcast Interview Transcript.
