In late February, Abhijit Nag Balasubramaniam packed his life in Sweden into a suitcase and flew to Bengaluru. What followed was several days of anger and resentment over the way they were treated by the Swedish authorities. Now, the India-born entrepreneur is ready to talk about why he was forced to sell his startup and leave Sweden.
In a telephone conversation with HT.com, 30-year-old Abhijeet said the Swedish bureaucracy killed his business, even though he had nothing but praise for the people of Sweden and its regional governments and municipalities.
working in europe
At 30, Bengaluru-born Abhijit Balasubramaniam has more degrees than most people – one in electrical engineering, another in international marketing from Germany, and a third a research master’s degree in sustainable economics from Sweden.
Despite this, the world of education never attracted him. And the corporate world burnt it down.
“I’ve been working for the last six years. I worked at a company called Murrelektronik in Germany, then at a company called Northvolt in Sweden. I also worked at an eco-village called Suderbyn in Sweden, which is where I got into hydroponics,” he told HT.com. “Briefly, I also worked at a company called Vercor in France, which was into electrical battery manufacturing for EV cars.”
It was while working in Francewhere he was earning around 45,000 euros per year ( ₹48 Lakhs approximately), that Abhijeet suffered such severe burns that he had to return to India.
After returning home, he decided to follow his passion of growing produce on a more professional level.
move to sweden
Abhijeet started applying for a Sweden visa and was lucky enough to get approval to start a business residence permit for a job seeker/prospect, which allows recipients to stay in Sweden for up to nine months. In November 2024, he moved to Sweden with the dream of starting his own hydroponics business.
Abhijeet had already worked in Sweden, when he realized that the North sweden Fresh produce was in very short supply. With his startup, he aimed to bridge that gap.
“Eco Village Suderbein is where I developed my passion for hydroponics because I was working as a applied research coordinator. That’s where I fell in love with hydroponics,” he said.
“But since it was a part-time job and I was also writing my master’s thesis, I couldn’t make it my full-time job.
“After that, I had to find a full-time job to stay in Sweden, so I applied to Northvolt and got in. It was around 2022. I moved about 700 kilometers north of Stockholm, close to the Arctic Circle.
“There, I saw a big issue – food in supermarkets was not nutritious because it traveled long distances. By the time you bought it, especially greens and vegetables, they were spoiling quickly. That’s where the idea of using my hydroponics experience to grow local food in northern Sweden came from,” he said.
a startup in sweden
Abhijeet started growing produce in his basement using a small hydroponics kit. “I started small – developing in my home unit and talking to local municipalities to understand how to start a business there. I started developing in my basement in Skellefteå,” he recalls.
“I posted on a local Facebook group asking if anyone wanted to try my produce. Within two hours, I got 40 responses. I distributed everything for free, although many people insisted on paying. That really inspired me.
“Then I contacted ICA Quantum, a supermarket. I showed them a presentation of my work and gave them samples. They liked the quality and were interested in working with me,” he told HT.com.
At this time, Abhijeet was working alone and doing everything from growing produce to market research and reaching out to potential customers.
“This was before I formally registered the company. I wanted to verify the demand first. After getting the confirmation, I registered the company in May 2025,” he said.
This is how he became the founder of Hydro Space Sweden AB with the dream of making northern Sweden food secure.
Challenges of being an immigrant entrepreneur
However, scaling the startup was not easy. Abhijeet not only had to contend with operational delays and setbacks, but also with the Swedish Migration Agency – which was ultimately responsible for his expulsion.
“Our equipment arrived late due to shipping delays from China. We started full-scale production in December. But soon after, I was asked to leave Sweden,” he said.
Abhijeet’s first in July 2025 visa was scheduled to expire. He had already filed the paperwork for a business visa.
“I wanted to make sure everything was legal, so I uploaded all the documents I had. And then I also wrote to them saying that if they needed more documents, please let me know. I would be happy to provide. After that, I never heard back from them until the first week of December,” he said.
due to deportation
“In the first week of December, I received a letter from the migration agency stating that based on the documents I had submitted, my application was likely to be rejected. He cited four reasons, but none of them made much sense,” the entrepreneur said.
Abhijeet told HT.com that Swedish migration agency Migrationsverket gave him four reasons why his application was rejected. He rejected all four reasons as baseless.
“The first reason was that I didn’t have prior experience running a business. This was wrong. I was actively involved in my parent’s company and managing its full-scale operations. While I didn’t own 100% of the company – because it’s a coffee business and I didn’t have the capital to have full ownership – I was still running it in a significant capacity,” he told HT.com.
second reason
“The second reason they gave was that I didn’t know enough Swedish, which again was not true,” he said.
“As part of my application, I submitted proof of my language proficiency through SFI (Swedish for Immigrants), a government-run program that certifies language levels. I had completed levels C and D, and while I was still waiting for the official certificate for level D due to the summer holidays, I already had my results.
“I shared the screenshots of those results along with my Level C certificate and informed them that as soon as I get the final certificate I will submit it.
“Also, their own guidelines state that applicants need proficiency in either Swedish or English – not both. English is my native language, and I completed my entire education in English, including publishing my master’s thesis in the language. So, even with my Swedish proficiency, I still met the language requirement,” claimed Abhijeet.
third reason
“The third issue he raised was that I didn’t have enough customers, which I found particularly disappointing.
“By that stage, I had already acquired ICA Quantum as a customer and had received formal acceptance documents from them. I also contacted restaurants and other small provision stores and provided them with boxes of the taste as samples and took them on as my customers,” he said.
Fourth and final point
Ultimately the Swedish Migration Agency told the Indian entrepreneur that he did not have enough personal capital to support himself. Abhijeet rejected this also.
“They also raised a fourth concern – that I did not have enough personal capital to support myself in Sweden. According to their own guidelines, I needed to show approximately 200,000 Swedish kronor ( ₹About 20 lakhs). I already submitted proof of 250,000 kroner ( ₹25 lakh) in my personal bank account – not my business account, just my personal money,” he said.
(Also read: Bengaluru Tech founder says his US visa rejected after questions over salary)
“What made it particularly confusing was that they already had full access to my bank details. Despite this, I sent them an updated statement again on the same date, confirming that the funds were still intact and had not been used.
““I also mentioned that I could provide details from my Indian bank account if required, as I had extra funds there, but I chose not to transfer everything to my Swedish account,” Abhijeet claimed.
except sweden
Despite sending explanations, bank statements, customer contracts and certificates, Abhijeet never received a proper response from the Swedish authorities. By this time, his case had begun to receive attention in the local media.
Abhijeet’s application was rejected on 6 February 2026. They were asked to leave Sweden within 28 days.
He expressed his frustration with the migration agency in general and his case officer in particular.
“Because of the publicity associated with my case, the officer knew who I was. I asked him if investing additional personal funds or in a company account could improve my prospects, but he never gave a straight answer. He avoided answering me and said he could not give me any such information,” Abhijeet said.
“When I asked him if there was any other way to secure a visa, he said he could not give specific information, as the decision was made on a case-by-case basis and only he knew which documents were required.
“When I pressed for guidance, he laughed on the call. The conversation felt dismissive and, frankly, xenophobicAbhijeet said.
sell company
With only a few weeks left to wrap up his operations, Abhijeet faced the difficult challenge of selling his produce and closing the business into which he had invested so much time, energy and resources. He immediately contacted the procurement manager of ICA Quantum explaining the situation. The manager agreed to help, recognizing the value of Abhijeet’s products.
Abhijeet and his apprentice harvested all their produce in a single day, packing around 800 items into 60-80 bags. To ensure nothing was wasted, each bag was sold at a deep discount, and within a few hours, everything was pre-booked and sold out.
For this last batch, the startup earned about 12,000 Swedish kronor (approx. ₹1.2 lakh).
So what’s next for this entrepreneur? As of now, Abhijeet is not sure. He is back in Bengaluru and has joined his family’s coffee business, and is not sure whether he wants to move abroad in the near future.
