Meet Santhoshi Sushma Buddhiraju, CEO and co-founder of Autocracy Machinery, a heavy machinery manufacturing company located in southern India. The idea for her company began with a simple question: Why is India, the world’s largest consumer, so reliant on imported machinery? Answering that question entailed bold risks, fearless leadership, and personal sacrifice.
Santhoshi had a strong foundation to start a business, even one that was extremely male-dominated. She got a world-class education at IIT Madras, created a food delivery start-up on the side, received a prestigious internship at Georgia Tech in the United States, and ultimately built her corporate career at HSBC. But solving local problems in her home country of India captured her imagination and fueled her resolve.
While most entrepreneurs were shutting down their businesses during COVID, Santhoshi was launching her startup with a vision to transform India’s infrastructure and economy through local manufacturing expertise. According to Santhoshi, India imported $43 billion in machinery in the last financial year alone. “That’s huge,” she says, “and imagine being the biggest population of the world, the biggest consumer of goods. And then we realized why are we not manufacturing our stuff and very basic stuff? You have more manpower than anybody can imagine, and imagine what magic you can do,” she declares.
Santhoshi identified and capitalized on an enormous opportunity. She explains: “Our cities are developing, our ecosystem is developing, and our population is rising. What India is trying to do is build a better utility network – water pipelines, gas, electricity, digital networks, cable, optical fiber networks, all of this to every household. And it all requires machinery. There’s a need. There’s an opportunity. Why don’t we manufacture the machines, machines which we are importing at $150K?” And so she did, manufacturing machinery that was cheaper, faster, and responsive to local needs, first in the utility industry and now in many others.
Hear how Santhoshi is breaking down barriers, listening to her customers, relying on her team, and encouraging entrepreneurs to do the same.
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Full Transcript
Note: This transcript was generated by an automated system and has been lightly edited for clarity. It may contain errors or omissions.
(00:01)
Santhoshi Buddhiraju: I think I should say we are a crazy company trying to do crazy machinery in India.
(00:07)
Darius Teter: When the world was busy shutting down in 2020, our guest did something bold. She launched a heavy equipment manufacturing start-up in India.
(00:15)
Santhoshi Buddhiraju: I am Santhoshi Buddhiraju, CEO and co-founder of Autocracy Machinery.
(00:27)
Darius Teter: Today on Grit & Growth, we take you to Hyderabad, a bustling hub of innovation and industry in southern India. It’s there that Santhoshi and her team are transforming the heavy machinery landscape. She’s breaking barriers in a male-dominated industry and making waves on a global scale.
(00:48)
Santhoshi Buddhiraju: Our journey started during COVID time when the whole world was shutting down. We realized labor was quite a big problem. Manpower was not available, and we were extremely dependent on imports.
(00:59)
Darius Teter: Santhoshi’s determination to solve big challenges stems from her roots, and her journey was shaped by resilience and her family’s unwavering support.
(01:07)
Santhoshi Buddhiraju: I come from a very normal middle-class Indian family, very conservative. Two daughters. My parents wanted a boy, so they thought that they raised me like a boy. They wanted a boy. They ended up with me. They had no option. But then, actually, I think that was when my parents, they never showed anything like “you can’t do something.” I think that was my nurture. So they were supportive.
(01:38)
Darius Teter: Santhoshi’s journey began at IIT [Indian Institute of Technology] Madras, where she laid the foundation for her career with a world-class education, but also created a food delivery side hustle. From there, she got her first international opportunity through an internship at Georgia Tech, and eventually she ventured into the corporate world, first as a consultant and then moving into a leadership role at HSBC.
(02:01)
Santhoshi Buddhiraju: My mom said that, okay, you’ve taken too much of risk, now you shouldn’t. I was like, okay. I tried to be good girl at least once, listened to her. And then HSBC was another journey where I learned working long hours there. I learned that you pick up a job, you finish a job there. I learned taking risk. I think HSBC taught me working in an organized way and see how the big firms do it, how the structure, how an organizational structure is built in.
(02:30)
Darius Teter: Seeing a significant gap in the market, Santhoshi envisioned local manufacturing as a way to reduce dependency and transform India’s industry and economy. During the pandemic, it was nearly impossible to source essential heavy equipment in India, like earth-moving and trenching equipment. This caused critical infrastructure projects to stall.
(02:38)
Santhoshi Buddhiraju: We realized, okay, we are actually sending rockets out. We’re sending everything out of the space. Why are we unable to do the basic machinery that we need on our day-to-day basis?
(02:47)
Darius Teter: That’s when Santhoshi decided to step up, and tackle the problem head-on. From trenching for underground utility networks to specialized equipment for agriculture and water supply, the company is redefining what’s possible for Indian manufacturing while tailoring it to India’s specific needs.
(02:57)
Santhoshi Buddhiraju: So we have problems. I will not say “problems.” We have “developmental opportunities.” So the problem that we were trying to solve at that point was: There’s a lot of machinery that we were importing into the country – $43 billion was what we imported last financial year. That’s huge. And imagine you being the biggest population of the world, biggest consumer of the goods. And then we realized: Why are we not manufacturing our stuff? And very, very basic stuff.
(03:24)
Darius Teter: Santhoshi was drawn to creating something truly transformative, but from the ground up,
(03:29)
Santhoshi Buddhiraju: The adrenaline rush just got me and building something was immense fun. From zero to one, the journey was amazing.
(03:39)
Darius Teter: It was that adrenaline rush that set the stage for her next bold adventure, and thus Autocracy Machinery was born.
(03:46)
Santhoshi Buddhiraju: You have more manpower than anybody can imagine, and imagine what magic you can do. Just the way we did it in the IT sector. What can we do if we don’t support ourselves? Our cities are developing, our ecosystem is developing, and our population is rising, so we have to get more organized. So what India is trying to do is build a better utility network. Water pipelines, gas, electricity, digital networks or cable optical fiber networks, all of this to every household. This problem itself did not exist to us five years back. Ten years back before 2000, 2010, years, five, 10 years back, we were having different problems altogether to solve, and now we are seeing growth and growth happening at a rapid speed. So now it is demanding for more settled, organized, well-planned cities, and then you require machinery for them. So that is when we said that, okay, if you’re putting your underground utility network, so if you have to develop this, you need to dig and imagine how much you’ll have to dig. For this, we require machinery that will do the job faster, that will do the job cheaper, and that will do the job accurately. So then we realized there’s a need, there’s an opportunity. Why don’t we manufacture the machines, machines which we are importing at $150K? Why are we not manufacturing it? We eventually went and manufactured them. I think then Autocracy had everything it required.
(05:11)
Darius Teter: Autocracy Machinery provides the tools needed to cut roads, dig trenches, and lay the groundwork for India’s rapidly developing infrastructure. Santhoshi and her team built solutions that not only reduced reliance on imports, but also delivered unmatched service to local markets and eventually, well outside of India.
(05:19)
Santhoshi Buddhiraju: I can simply say you add one plus one or you add a hundred plus a hundred, it’s the same engineering. It’s the same mechanical. You learn. So we kept on learning. We added two more industries. Now I’m supplying for solar, we supplying for Africa. We are supplying Middle East. We’ve supplied machinery for Ukraine war. I could pinch myself. Why is Middle East coming to India to me at four-year-, five-year-old start-up saying that, can you manufacture this machine? I was doing something right. I was listening to the customer saying that this is their problem. They wanted solutions, quality, cost, effectiveness, and after-sale service,
(06:02)
Darius Teter: It wasn’t all wins in the early days. Like any ambitious start-up, Autocracy Machinery faced its fair share of setbacks. Santhoshi and her partner, Laxman, were constantly questioning if they were on the right path, navigating the challenges of bringing a first-of-its-kind product to market in India.
(06:20)
Santhoshi Buddhiraju: The ride was bumpy. I would not say bumpy. The ride was roller coaster. The first one here was every time I and my partner, Laxman,used to ask, he asked that tough question, like, are we doing this right? And to any entrepreneur who is ever listening to this, trust me, I question myself that every day, but it’s still an answer that I keep looking at. I go on day after day after day. From the challenges standpoint, you can call it a first-mover advantage, but you can also call it a first-mover disadvantage. People are skeptical when you bring a new problem. And that, too, we were a company that was doing its first product for the first time and first-of-its-kind product in India. You have to listen to your customer. You have to be patient with them. You have to be nice to them.
(07:05):
There is no other way. That’s the only way. The customer is God. And trust me, I would not understand this two years back, three or four years back. As an employee of some company, I’d be like, okay. But now I will be like, if the customer says something, it’ll trigger a reaction. Earlier it used to be like, okay, he’s having some problem. How much does he want to pay for the problem? Now I’ll be like, he has a problem. Solve the problem, and if any other customer is going to face the similar problem, do it in advance. Go to him before it comes to him.
(07:38)
Darius Teter: The problems weren’t just technical, they were also personal. What makes this story even more remarkable, is that Santhoshi chose to step into an industry traditionally dominated by men, a field where it’s rare to see women take charge, let alone disrupt the market. In a world where societal expectations often define career paths, she broke barriers to tackle some of the hardest problems with determination and ingenuity.
(07:42)
Santhoshi Buddhiraju: I’ll tell you how male-dominated it is. There were times when I and my partner walked into a meeting and they thought I was the secretary. I know that it was a male-dominated industry, but again, you jump into it and then you realize, oops, I jumped into it – now I have to swim through it. I’m 33 years old and I’m not married. That’s a very big taboo in India right now. Poor my mom and my dad, wherever they go, the first thing they’re asked is, why is she not married yet? And my mom and dad, they said that she’s trying to do something, but still they come back and they’re a little afraid to ask me the question. It’s your baby, and it requires an undivided attention. And I said that I’ll take care of this baby fully. Once the baby is a little grown and it can take care of itself, I’ll give a little more time for my personal life. And you will learn to sacrifice. People will think you’re mad and crazy. And I think I should quote this out, this has been the hardest part of my life. Last year I was thinking I should get married. And then one day I woke up and I said that, no, I don’t think I’ll be able to do this because it’ll be unfair for me because I would not do justice to this and that.
(08:52)
Darius Teter: Taking on family expectations and cultural and gender norms may be lonely. But for the rest of their challenges, Santhoshi credits her team for the company’s success and growth.
(09:03)
Santhoshi Buddhiraju: All my employees, my research and development team is like the backbone of the company that’s added by my partner. They just do the first machine and then after the first machine, they knock it out into my basket and say, I’m done with the first one. You now do the rest, the second, the third, the hundredth. You keep on doing. Both my teams either be the one that does the production and pushes it and all the R&D team. And as a team, we were around a 20- or a 25-people team, and now we are 150-, 160-people team. I should say I’ve been very, very lucky with the team. I know it might sound cliche and all, and it was me there on the front. It was always the team behind. We won a national award. I think we celebrated it for half a day. The team was back at work. And I think the whole credit goes to the team and my partner. I have been there as the front face of it and all. I don’t think it would’ve been possible without that wonderful team that I had.
(10:09)
Darius Teter: Santhoshi’s story is a testament to fearless leadership and the power of bold, unconventional thinking. She stepped into an industry that few women would dare to enter. She not only broke barriers, but also redefined what’s possible in Indian manufacturing. By tackling problems with perseverance, sacrifice, and a clear vision, Santhoshi has proven that meaningful progress is driven by determination and a team united in its purpose. Her journey reminds us that innovation isn’t just about the machinery you build, it’s about the change you inspire. I’d like to thank Santhoshi for sharing the Autocracy Machinery story. I’m Darius Teter and this has been a Grit & Growth Short Take. Erika Amoako-Agyei and VeAnne Virgin researched and developed content for this episode. Kendra Gladych is our production coordinator, and our executive producer is Tiffany Steeves, with writing and production from Nathan Tower and sound design and mixing by Ben Crannell at Lower Street Media.
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