Eternal’s Greening India comes up with agro-forestry carbon credit model to tackle CO2 emissions

The Eternal Group (formerly Zomato) has come up with an agroforestry-based carbon credit model to tackle carbon emissions through its Greening India initiative.

The model is to encourage growers to take up cultivation of plantation crops along with fruits. The company approaches the farmer and pitches its project, said Vishal Kumar, head of Greening India.

To take up the project, which is now two years old, Greening India provides all input support free of cost to the farmer. In return, the company obtains farmers’ consent, under which they agree to grant carbon rights when the tree absorbs Co₂ from the air. This helps the group meet its net-zero goals. 

Win-win situation

“This works for everyone because when we do the plantation, the first 3-4 years the farmer can continue to grow whatever crops they were growing because the trees are small. Their income would be the same,” he said.

From the fourth year onwards, when the tree begins to bear fruit, the income doubles. Even 20-25 years down the line when the plantation tree begins to die, the grower can sell the timber for his/her income, said the Greening India head.

“So let’s say we take a farmer in Karur or Trichy, where we are working and the farmer was growing rice or cotton or something else and making X amount of money. So we go and pitch the project to them that if you move to a timber-plus-fruit-based farming model, your income over the years would multiply by at least 2X,” he told businessline in an online interaction. 

Voluntary commitment

The Eternal Group has made a voluntary net-zero commitment that whatever carbon emissions happen due to its work, they will be offset. It is focusing on the most credible credits, which are removal credits, essentially the credits which remove CO2 out of the air. India is primarily an agricultural economy, so we built this agro-forestry model, said Kumar.

Eternal has launched the project in 19 districts across 6 States. “We started in Maharashtra, we worked in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and lately, in the last 1-1.5 years we have realised that in the South we are getting a lot of traction,” said the Greening India head. 

In Tamil Nadu, the company works in 3 districts – Karur, Tiruchirapalli and Salem. In Telangana, it works in Vanapurthi and Nagakadnur, while in Andhra, it works in Anantapur. 

 “Last year’s enrolment included 6,981 farmers across 11,590 acres of farmland. This year, we already have 10,000 farmers who have registered in our programme and given this is the monsoon season, although monsoon has been a bit erratic this year, as we speak we are already doing plantation with these farmers,” said Kumar.

Working with native species

One of the reasons for the Eternal Group to consider the agro-forestry model is that India is primarily still an agricultural country with a large farmer base. It helped the company to work in a way where it not only met the climate goals but was able to achieve other objectives such as increasing farmers’ income. 

Initially called Zomato, the Eternal Group now comprises Blinkit, a 10-minute delivery app, District, its entertainment and live events and ticketing company, and Hyperpure. 

The Greening India project tries to work with native species. “We go meet the village sarpanch and have sort of consultations with farmers, and based on what they want to do, we come up with a list of those fruit and timber species,” he said.

However, the project looks to plant trees that have enough carbon sequestration and which have a longer duration of life. It does not cultivate bamboo, which will be cut in five years.

Current target

Within mango, Greening India takes up, for example, the Chausa or Langra variety in Uttar Pradesh or the Totapuri in Andhra Pradesh. “We procure the saplings from the National Horticulture Board-certified nurseries, and the request comes from the farmer. We just run a check whether it meets the carbon criteria and then we move forward,” said Kumar. 

Though Greening India was launched in 2024, the Eternal Group took its time to figure out farmers’ interest. Currently, its target is to distribute over 2.5 million trees across 10,000 acres of farmland in the country by the end of the current fiscal year.

Kumar said once mature, these trees will help pull 1.5 million tonnes of CO₂ from the air over the next 30 years, equivalent to taking 300,000 petrol cars off the road in a year. On the other hand, it expects to sequester 600,000+ tonnes of CO₂ over the next 30 years from trees distributed as of March 26.

1 m saplings given

On the other hand, the project is expected to increase farmers’ income by 50-200 per cent over time, depending on what has been planted, where and how it’s sold.

As of March 2026, Greening India has distributed 1 million saplings. On the selection criteria, he said the company does a KYC (know your customer) to verify details of the farmer once he/she comes forward and expresses interest in the project. 

The land records are verified. Once this is done, Greening India field staff, who number about 100, go to the farm and draw up the plan to avoid fraud or where people grow trees and then cut them. 

“We have in-house tech tools through which we can check through satellite imagery what has been happening on that land for the last 10 years. If there is no deforestation on that land, that is the stage where the farmer gets approved,” said the Greening India head.

Farmers are hand-held as this is a long-term project for the company, which links all of them through a WhatsApp group. They are given the choice of selling their produce to buyers, but the company has set up a collection centre at Tiruchirapalli due to interest from the farmers. Even at the collection centres, there is no obligation on the farmers to supply it to the company, he said, adding that the staff provide details on the current market price to growers. 

Published on July 27, 2026