The Better India · 13 hours ago

Bengaluru's ‘Renewcred’ Is Helping Indian Farmers Turn Crop Waste Into a New Source of Income

For years, Hardik Vaghasiya did what farmers across India have long done after a harvest: looked at the stalks and leaves scattered across his fields and saw only a problem to be cleared. The idea that this residue could hold value - environmental, financial, or otherwise - had simply never entered the equation. That began to change when RenewCred, a Bengaluru-based platform founded by Abhimanyu Rathi and Yogendra Panchal, started building the market infrastructure to connect agricultural waste with carbon credits, using IoT sensors, AI verification, and a network of 93 scientists to ensure that every credit represents a genuine climate benefit. "Farmers should not be treated as passive beneficiaries," Rathi says - and the model reflects that conviction, positioning farmers not as recipients of climate charity but as active participants in solving a problem that belongs to everyone. What this story quietly demonstrates is that some of the most consequential shifts begin not with grand invention but with the willingness to look at something long dismissed - a pile of crop waste, a gap in a market - and ask whether it might matter after all.