For decades, India's small farmers have faced a difficult cycle of declining soil fertility, rising input costs, unpredictable weather, and shrinking profits. Yet beneath their feet lies one of the world's biggest untapped climate solutions: healthy soil.

Recognising this opportunity, three entrepreneurs launched Varaha in 2022, a climate-tech company that helps farmers adopt practices that improve soil health while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In return, farmers can earn an additional income through carbon credits. Companies such as Google and Microsoft purchase these credits to offset their emissions, and a share of that revenue goes directly to the farmers.

Today, more than two lakh farmers across India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Côte d'Ivoire are part of this model. More than one lakh of them participate through Varaha's flagship regenerative agriculture and afforestation programmes alone. From the very first year, they gain an additional source of income while gradually restoring the health of their land.

The idea was born from a gap in climate finance

Long before Varaha was incorporated in 2022, its founders kept running into the same problem. Farmers were being encouraged to adopt sustainable farming practices, but there was very little financial support to make the transition worthwhile.

Ankita Garg had spent years working at Bayer and Monsanto, where she witnessed the stark contrast between well-resourced farms in developed countries and India's smallholder farmers, many of whom were struggling with shrinking profits and increasingly unpredictable weather.

At the same time, Madhur Jain was working with Precision Development (PxD), helping scale digital advisory services to millions of farmers across India. Vishal Kuchanur brought the technological expertise needed to build solutions that could work across vast and fragmented agricultural landscapes.

Together, they realised that India's farmers were sitting on an untapped opportunity.

Healthy soil naturally absorbs and stores carbon from the atmosphere, helping slow climate change. Yet India's nearly 150 million smallholder farmers remained largely excluded from the financial benefits linked to these environmental gains. Their landholdings were small and scattered, monitoring was expensive, and there was no system that could bring millions of farmers into the carbon economy.

"So we built a model where regenerative practices generate carbon credits, that credit income makes adoption worthwhile from year one, and improving soil fertility steadily lifts yields over a five-year arc," says Madhur Jain, CEO and co-founder of Varaha.

That idea became the foundation of Varaha.

The company's name is inspired by the Varaha avatar of Lord Vishnu, who, according to Hindu mythology, rescued the Earth from the cosmic ocean and restored it. For the founders, the name reflects their mission of helping farmers restore degraded land while improving their livelihoods.

Throughout 2021, the founders immersed themselves in understanding carbon markets and learning what would encourage farming communities to adopt sustainable practices. After months of research, Ankita and her co-founders formally incorporated Varaha in Gurugram, Haryana, in March 2022.

Within months, the startup had begun working with farmers across multiple states, building a model that linked healthier soils with better incomes.

How it actually works on the ground

Varaha's work begins with people.

Field teams, NGOs, and local partners visit villages to explain the programme face-to-face to build trust. They walk farmers through what changes they would need to make, how the process works, and what they could earn in return.

Once a farmer signs up, their land is mapped, and key details such as crop type and existing farming practices........

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