India Tech Report

Tag: carbon credits

  • Mitti Labs carbon project platform and other climate conversations

    Mitti Labs carbon project platform and other climate conversations

    Hi, wherever you’re reading this, I hope you’re doing well. Thank you for supporting my work by being a subscriber. It means a lot.

    A new episode on the podcast: a conversation with the founders of Mitti Labs

    It’s World Environment Day today, and the latest episode on my podcast features a conversation with the founders of Mitti Labs on their carbon project to help rice farmers cut methane emissions from their fields, save water and make money from the sale of the carbon credits generated from the green house gas reduction.

    $12.8 billion: Cumulative climate tech funding in India according to a new report

    Tracxn, a global private markets data provider, has just released its India Climate Tech Report 2026, saying that the sector is becoming increasingly investible.

    Two other podcast episode recommendations if climate tech and related finance interests you.

    A noteworthy effort combining ESG and India’s digital public infrastructure model.

    Next week

    On Tuesday, I’ll publish Part 2 of a wonderful conversation with Naganand Doraswamy (managing partner) and Suryaprakash Konanuru (CTO), founders of Ideaspring Capital. We talk about what might represent the ‘Flipkart moment’ of deep tech in India, and plans for the VC firm ahead.

    That’s it for today. When you have a minute, please would you share this with friends who might be interested in India’s deep tech and climate tech startups. Here’s wishing you a great rest of the day.

  • Decarbonising rice: Mitti Labs founders on their plan for future of sustainable farming

    Decarbonising rice: Mitti Labs founders on their plan for future of sustainable farming

    In today’s episode, on the occasion of World Environment Day, I bring you a conversation with Devdut Dalal (Dev), Xavier Laguarta Soler (Xavi) and Nathan Torbick (Nate), founders of Mitti Labs.

    Rice is a nutritional staple for nearly half the human population. Its cultivation is also a formidable contributor to global warming, accounting for 10-12 percent of all methane emissions from human activity. And Methane is 80-86 times more potent than CO2 in warming the planet over a 20-year timeframe, and about 28 times over a century.

    Growing rice also takes up 40 percent of the world’s freshwater resources. By drowning their fields to suppress weeds, farmers have inadvertently cultivated methanogenic microbes that release this ‘super pollutant.’ At Mitti Labs, Harvard Business School alumni Dev and Xavi have teamed up with Nate, a distinguished scientist who’s worked NASA and JaXA, to build a “full-stack” remedy.

    They started work in India first some three years ago, persuading farmers to try out a technique known as Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) that entails periodically drain their fields, interrupting the anaerobic feast of methane-producing bacteria.

    This is a known practice developed at the International Rice Research Institute. What the entrepreneurs at Mitti Labs are doing, however, is to plug in an innovative digital Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (dMRV) platform. Using tools including satellite data and digital twins of the farms they aim to convert the methane reductions from AWD to equivalent carbon credits.

    The plan at this venture, which is backed by the VC investor Lightspeed, is to become a vertically integrated carbon project developer providing farmers with free tools and a share of the revenue from the sale of the carbon credits.

    Dev, Xavi and Nate, and their 100-plus team are already working with some 70,000 farmers in India, through partnerships with various NGOs and other such grassroots organisations that work closely with the farmers.

    Their long-term success hinges on mobilising a substantial share of some 150 million smallholder rice growers who have farmed the same way for generations.

  • Coming up: Mitti Labs founders on vision for sustainable rice farming

    Coming up: Mitti Labs founders on vision for sustainable rice farming

    Rice is one of our biggest staples, here in India, but the way our farmers grow it is becoming increasingly unsustainable, as it contributes to depleting our water tables to dangerous levels.

    Rice cultivation is also responsible for 10-12 percent of all methane released into the atmosphere from human activity — a gas that is 80-86 more potent than CO2 in warming the planet over a 20-year period.

    Devdut Dalal, Xavier Laguarta Soler and Nathan Torbick, founders of Mitti Labs, have a plan to change this, at scale. And they’re already persuading some 70,000 rice farmers in India to try out their science-backed methods.

    In the process, they also want to translate the reduced methane emissions to equivalent carbon credits, so that the farmers benefit from a share of the money from the sale of those credits.

    Catch the full conversation on Friday, June 5, World Environment Day, right here or wherever you get your podcasts. Here’s a quick preview, with Nate giving us a sense of the potential for methane reduction and the water savings.