In a landmark deal for India's climate tech sector, Bengaluru-based Varaha has secured a major investment of $30 million from French sustainable asset manager Mirova. This funding will fuel the significant expansion of Varaha's Kheti soil-carbon project across the agricultural heartlands of Haryana and Punjab.
A Pioneering Carbon Investment in India
This transaction marks Mirova's first carbon investment in India and represents its largest single carbon deal globally to date. Rather than taking an equity stake, Mirova has made a project-level investment in exchange for future carbon credits. This innovative financing structure provides capital upfront, with carbon credits being delivered over the coming years.
Madhur Jain, CEO of Varaha, explained the mechanism to TOI: "This is an investment into the project against which Mirova receives carbon credits. The money comes first, and credits are delivered over the next few years."
Transforming Agriculture Through Carbon Removal
The substantial investment will finance regenerative agriculture practices for more than 337,000 smallholder farmers across 675,000 hectares of land. Jain highlighted a significant shift in the carbon market, noting that global buyers are increasingly moving toward removal-based credits rather than reduction credits.
"High-quality buyers have moved away from reduction credits," Jain stated. "Removal is costlier but built on higher scientific and data rigour, and it has led to new methodologies and even new registries over the last five years."
Varaha focuses on four distinct carbon removal pathways:
- Regenerative agriculture
- Biochar production
- Agroforestry on degraded lands
- Enhanced rock weathering
Scientific Rigour Meets Field Experience
The company's development model combines agricultural expertise with scientific depth. "We run experiments with institutions like IARI Pusa and IIT Kharagpur to understand the net change in carbon from each intervention," Jain explained. "Multi-year, high-quality datasets feed into the carbon models we build."
Execution on the ground depends heavily on field experience. Jain emphasized that working with smallholder farmers requires deep experience because livelihoods cannot be disrupted. Notably, approximately 36 percent of Varaha's team has direct smallholder agriculture exposure, with many team members holding agricultural degrees.
Prior to the Mirova transaction, Varaha had raised $13 million in equity and $23 million in combined equity and credit-linked structures. The company's carbon credit buyers span technology, aviation, telecom, consulting, and commodities sectors, all located outside India. Earlier this year, Varaha signed a multi-year biochar offtake agreement with Google.
Currently operating 13 carbon projects across India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan, Varaha plans to use the Mirova financing to expand its regenerative agriculture operations and develop crop-specific carbon models, further strengthening India's position in the global carbon market.
