For nearly 14 years, Vikramdev Mohapatra’s working life revolved around software, implementation projects and corporate technology. Today, his days are centred on something very different: mushrooms.
The BTech graduate from Odisha left an established career in information technology to move into commercial farming, setting up Ganga Bhumi Mushrooms in Nabarangpur. The venture reportedly produces 500–600kg of mushrooms a day and generates more than Rs10 lakh a month after operating expenses. Those financial and production figures, however, are based largely on publicly available profiles and social-media accounts rather than independently audited records.
Mohapatra’s story is about more than a dramatic change of profession. It also shows how technology, organised production, government support and access to urban markets can turn farming into a sizeable rural enterprise.
An engineer who chose farming
Mohapatra studied Electronics and Communications Engineering at Biju Patnaik University of Technology in Odisha before building a career in IT.
Over the following years, he worked with companies including Discoverture Solutions, Mindtree, Serole Technologies and LTIMindtree. His reported roles ranged from software engineering and product implementation to technical leadership, SAP-related work, team management and client co-ordination.
His public professional profile still reflects that technology background, including SAP-related project experience, but now describes him simply as a “Button Mushroom Enthusiast”.
After about 14 years in the technology industry, Mohapatra returned to Nabarangpur and turned to commercial mushroom cultivation.
Rather than treating farming as a small side venture, he set up an organised production and processing unit under the name Ganga Bhumi Mushrooms.
The brand itself is relatively new. A trademark application for Ganga Bhumi Mushrooms was filed in Mohapatra’s name in September 2025 for fresh button mushroom production.
Producing hundreds of kilograms a day
The scale of the operation is what has drawn attention to Mohapatra’s story.
Recent reports put daily production at around 500–600kg, or roughly 15–18 tonnes a month. The mushrooms are reportedly supplied to markets including Brahmapur and Bhubaneswar.
There is some external support for the stated production capacity. A supplier of commercial mushroom-production systems lists Ganga Bhumi Mushrooms, Nabarangpur, among its completed projects and describes it as a 500kg-a-day mushroom production unit.
Social-media accounts cited in news reports describe the centre as having six chambers, three of which are used alternately for cultivation, helping maintain production through the year.
That matters because commercial mushroom farming depends heavily on controlled conditions. Temperature, humidity, hygiene and crop cycles must all be carefully managed. A unit built around controlled growing chambers therefore operates less like conventional open-field farming and more like a specialised food-production business.
The reported Rs10-lakh-a-month profit
Reports on Mohapatra’s venture put monthly revenue at about Rs16 lakh–Rs19 lakh, based on reported prices of roughly Rs100–Rs110 a kilogram. After operating expenses, the business is said to generate more than Rs10 lakh a month.
The project is reported to have cost about Rs2.56 crore, with around Rs97 lakh provided as subsidy under Odisha’s Mukhyamantri Krushi Udyog Yojana.
These figures illustrate an often overlooked point about modern agriculture: scale requires capital.
Mohapatra’s venture is therefore not simply a story of someone leaving a corporate job to grow a crop. It is closer to an agribusiness built around infrastructure, production planning, supply chains and access to markets.
The income figures should nevertheless be treated with caution. The Times of India, which recently profiled Mohapatra, explicitly noted that its revenue, production and employment figures had not been independently verified.
From employee to employer
The venture has also reportedly created jobs in Nabarangpur.
Mohapatra’s unit is said to employ 24 people — 18 women and six men.
That gives the story a wider rural dimension.
Migration from smaller towns and rural districts to large cities in search of work remains a familiar pattern in India. Enterprises built around commercial food production can create organised employment closer to home.
The reported presence of 18 women in a workforce of 24 also gives the venture a notable rural-employment angle.
Bringing an engineer’s mindset to agriculture
Mohapatra’s move from IT to farming may look like a complete break with his earlier career. In practice, the two fields are not as far apart as they seem.
Commercial mushroom cultivation requires systems thinking. Production schedules must be maintained, environmental conditions controlled, logistics co-ordinated, quality monitored and output matched with demand.
Those are skills with clear parallels in technology and project management.
Mohapatra therefore appears not to have abandoned what he learnt in the technology industry so much as applied it in a different setting.
His journey also challenges the old divide between highly skilled professional work and farming. Modern agriculture can involve substantial investment, climate-controlled infrastructure, machinery, supply-chain management, branding and data-led decision-making.
For Mohapatra, the move has taken him from software implementation to running a production system in which mushrooms are cultivated, processed and supplied to markets throughout the year.
If the reported economics prove sustainable, his experience offers an instructive example of how agriculture can become not merely an alternative to a corporate career, but a serious entrepreneurial venture in its own right.
