Pranoti Nagarkar

CEO / Mom

Pranoti is a rebel innovator who has broken stereotypes as a female mechanical engineer in the male-dominated hardware and robotics industry. From designing and building hardware prototypes in university to riding motorcycles, she has been a strong believer in breaking gender norms.

Pranoti had always wanted to be an inventor, and after a few years as a product designer, she embarked on her 14-year Rotimatic journey in 2008, and since then, went from garnering 37 patents to turning the company profitable last year, from 1 roti at a time to 200M rotis made across 50+ countries, with Rotimatics in 100,000 homes since its launch in 2017.

In her role as Co-founder of Zimplistic, she has created and engineered Rotimatic from concept to scale, with 37 patents under her name, she created the Rotimatic design, not just in mechanical systems and CAD models, but also the ergonomics and industrial design of Rotimatic.

At Zimplistic, Pranoti wears many hats, from engineering and product development to controlling the hardware supply chain, operations, sales and marketing.

She exemplifies someone who has an absolute solutions first problem solving approach, and a never say die attitude. She has embraced parenthood while also being a hands-on founder. From travelling to suppliers to set up manufacturing while pregnant, to taking the baby to work to finish the Rotimatic design before launch. She has accomplished all of this while building an authentic brand and community with a great product offering.

She has successfully managed a remote-first workplace across Asia, from Operations in Singapore and Malaysia to Research and Production in Vietnam and China, and Marketing and Customer Success in India, to provide a class-leading consumer hardware product.

She is also an advocate for women in STEM and a frequent panellist at technology entrepreneurship events. She is a champion for female entrepreneurs everywhere, believing in setting large, bold objectives and then pursuing them one small step at a time.

When she is not busy thinking about the future of kitchens and Rotimatic, she is busy being a mother to her two sons, ages nine and three. A person with a spiritual core, she is always learning and striving for mastery in order to understand the body-mind complex.