Rajat Gupta’s education in the price of a tractor

Rajat Gupta knew tractors before he built a website about them. His family had been in the trade since the early 1990s, and he had helped manage its dealership between 2011 and 2015. He could see a difficulty that a visitor admiring the machinery might miss: the buyer and the seller did not arrive knowing the same things. The tractor had a price. Whether the farmer could confidently compare that price was another matter.

Gupta studied computer science at Amity University and returned to the family business. His education gave him one set of tools; the dealership supplied a question worth using them on. Farmers needed dependable information about machines, specifications and costs. Car buyers could already consult comparison websites. Gupta saw room to offer tractor buyers a similar convenience.

There is something pleasingly practical about that starting point. A tractor is an expensive way to make a living. Buying the wrong machine, or paying more than necessary for the right one, has consequences long after the sales conversation ends. Gupta’s opening idea concerned the quality of that conversation. Could the farmer enter it better prepared?

The newlyweds talked tractors

In September 2016, Gupta married Shivani. She came from an agricultural trading family in Rajasthan; he came from the tractor business. Their shared commercial vocabulary followed them into married life. As he later recalled, “tractors became a common topic of discussion”. Some couples compare holiday destinations. These two had a rather more durable topic.

They began working on Tractor Junction after the wedding. Shivani brought a background in computer applications and took on technology and digital marketing in the early business. Today she is the company’s chief marketing officer. Describing the venture simply as Rajat’s website would miss the partnership on which it was built.

The couple initially ran the platform from a bedroom. Their first customer arrived in January 2017, and their first office opened in February 2018. The sequence gives the business a useful sense of scale: work first, a paying relationship next, premises later. The room changed before the central problem did.

Gupta also encountered a memorable objection. Friends and family questioned whether people in villages with unreliable electricity would look at tractors online. It was a reasonable doubt about an unfamiliar habit. He proceeded anyway. That early disagreement helps explain the wager he and Shivani were making: farmers would use digital information when it helped with a purchase they already cared about.

“tractors became a common topic of discussion”

Rajat Gupta, on his early conversations with Shivani · 2019

A website needs more than a launch day

Making information available was only the first job. Keeping it accurate was another. The early team wrestled with software that did not scale comfortably and with the painstaking maintenance of its database. Dealers, accustomed to finding customers through salespeople and mechanics, also needed persuading. A useful website still had to earn a place in an existing trade.

Those difficulties give Gupta’s technical background a less glamorous, more convincing setting. A comparison service depends on ordinary things being done repeatedly: information updated, alternatives presented clearly, enquiries handled. A launch can be celebrated once. A stale listing can disappoint a new visitor every day.

By September 2019, Gupta was presenting Tractor Junction through the GROW accelerator in Singapore. He wanted investment, but also validation and credibility. The ambition he described already extended across buying, selling and financing equipment. The boundaries of the business were being drawn around the farmer’s transaction, with each unanswered question suggesting another piece of work.

The showroom returns to the story

Tractor Junction eventually added a founding colleague with experience on both sides of the vehicle trade. Animesh Agarwal had worked in Mahindra’s farm equipment business and led North India operations at Cars24. He became co-founder and chief operating officer. Alongside Rajat and Shivani’s familiarity with rural buyers, he brought experience in organised vehicle transactions.

Physical outlets became part of the model. Agarwal’s explanation was plain: expensive vehicles invite inspection. Even an urban buyer usually wants to see the thing before paying for it. A farmer considering a used tractor has every reason to do the same. A screen can introduce the machine; the machine must still survive an introduction in person.

Gupta explained the business in three parts: connecting farmers with dealers, distributing used tractors, and helping arrange finance. Each addresses a different hesitation. Is this the model I need? Is this particular tractor worth buying? Can I afford the purchase? A customer can be satisfied with the first answer and still be stuck at the third.

In November 2025, he said about 70 percent of used-tractor sales involved financing. That figure gives the move into credit a human context. For many customers, a comparison is useful only if there is a workable route from interest to ownership. Gupta’s responsibilities had expanded from explaining prices to helping a transaction reach its conclusion.

The money gets its own machinery

FINJ launched in January 2024 to help rural vehicle buyers obtain loans through lending partners. By November 2025, Gupta said the platform had facilitated nearly ₹1,500 crore in loans over roughly 20 to 21 months, working with 25 lenders. These were loans arranged through the platform, a different measure from Tractor Junction’s own revenue.

Outside investment followed the expanding operation. A $5.7 million seed round in 2022 was co-led by Info Edge Ventures and Omnivore. In November 2025, a ₹200 crore financing round led by Astanor combined equity and debt. For Astanor, the investment marked its entry into India. For Gupta and his colleagues, it supplied resources for a business that now needed physical reach as well as digital attention.

The accounts added a necessary complication. Operating revenue rose from ₹63.4 crore in FY24 to ₹120.8 crore in FY25. Net losses also increased, from ₹3.7 crore to ₹9.1 crore. The growth was real; so was the expense of building it. A rising revenue line leaves plenty for a chief executive to solve.

Gupta’s company subsequently reported ₹198.4 crore in FY26 revenue. Its stated FY27 ambition was ₹400 crore. The distinction matters: one number described a completed year, the other a target. Expansion gives a founder more room to act and more promises against which to be measured.

A very practical sort of recognition

There is another side to Gupta’s working life: creating occasions for a trade to look at itself. Tractor Junction launched the Indian Tractor of the Year awards, ITOTY, in 2019. Manufacturers, financiers and equipment businesses became participants in an event built around machines that rarely receive the cultural attention lavished on passenger cars.

Discussing the 2025 edition, Gupta described the satisfaction of seeing tractors that affect farmers’ lives recognised on stage. The awards also make visible the connections his business needs: manufacturers producing equipment, lenders funding purchases, and people deciding which improvements deserve attention. It is a fairly crowded room for a venture that began with two people discussing tractors.

Recognition inside the company took a more spendable form in June 2026. Tractor Junction announced a ₹3 crore employee stock-option buyback for 80 eligible employees, its second liquidity programme in two years. Vested options could become money. In a business devoted to helping people finance working assets, the practical detail feels appropriate.

The company’s published values include integrity, ownership and the admirably direct “Every Rupee Counts”. Such statements are easy to print. A buyback offers a concrete example of how employee ownership can work. It also adds another constituency to Gupta’s job: the people who helped build the company and expect to share in its value.

Back among the dealers

In August 2026, Tractor Junction announced an agreement with Escorts Kubota to organise the valuation and resale of tractors taken in exchange by its authorised dealers. The first phase was planned for Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Used machines would be inspected, valued with market information and matched with prospective buyers.

For Gupta, the setting brings the story close to its beginning. A dealership selling new tractors must also deal with the old ones customers leave behind. Those machines tie up money until somebody buys them. Better information can help the farmer assess an exchange and help the dealer move inventory. The same transaction has two worried parties.

The agreement’s promised benefits remain aims, rather than automatic results. Still, its subject is revealing. Gupta is now working with a manufacturer’s dealer network on the sort of everyday commercial problem his family business taught him to notice. The website has become one component in a much larger effort to make a used machine easier to price and sell.

The next question is a loan application

Also in August 2026, the company announced an RBI licence for its subsidiary Dhanrise Finance. Lending was scheduled to begin in October in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, with a target of ₹100 crore in disbursements over the first 24 months. The plan would add direct lending to a group already arranging finance through partners.

The proposed service included faster loan decisions using tractor valuation and underwriting tools. Those are operating ambitions, with repayment and execution still ahead. For Gupta, becoming a lender broadens the responsibility attached to knowing a tractor’s price: the machine, the borrower and the loan must now make sense together.

His public self-description on LinkedIn is brisk: “Building Rural AutoTech”. The company has moved beyond tractors into commercial vehicles, two-wheelers, construction equipment and cars. Yet when asked about international expansion in late 2025, Gupta said India offered enough to do. The direction was breadth within a familiar market.

His career so far suggests how much work can follow one well-observed question. He returned from a computer science education to a family trade, built with Shivani, brought in an operations partner and kept following the purchase beyond the comparison page. A tractor’s price turned out to contain questions about information, trust, resale and credit. Gupta is still working through the bill.