On a February morning in 2012, Shashi Kumar stood near Krishna Rao Park in Bengaluru with 18 litres of milk in a car boot, pitching subscriptions for what he called organic milk. By noon, the stock was sold out. It was a small transaction, but it marked the first real validation of an idea that had taken shape over the previous two years at Akshayakalpa Organic.
The idea did not begin with milk. It began with a problem Kumar had seen up close. Born into a farming family on Bengaluru’s outskirts, he had moved away from agriculture under pressure to pursue a more stable career. He studied engineering, joined Wipro in 1991, and went on to work on telecom networks globally, including assignments with Nortel, Cisco and Ericsson. Alongside, he volunteered with Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation in Karnataka’s Tumkur district, working on watershed and livelihood programmes.
That exposure shaped the core insight. Improving farm productivity was not enough if incomes remained volatile. Younger workers were exiting agriculture not because land or water was scarce, but because earnings were uncertain. “The average Indian is around 30 years old. The average age of a farmer is 55,” Kumar says.
Corporate Pivot
In 2010, he left his corporate role and returned to India to test whether farming could be made economically viable. With veterinarian J N S Reddy, he set up Akshayakalpa with Rs 1.4 crore pooled from 27 former colleagues. For the first two years, the effort resembled a non-profit, focused on training farmers and improving yields. It generated little revenue. “People were quitting farming because it was not profitable,” Kumar says.
The pivot came from recognising that income frequency mattered as much as income size. Dairy offered a daily cash flow. In 2012, the company began procuring organic milk directly from farmers, linking production to a steady revenue stream. But the first operating model, which was selling through distributors, created a different problem. Payments were delayed, while farmer payouts had to be timely. The business ran into repeated working capital stress. Between 2010 and 2019, Kumar says, it came close to bankruptcy six times. “Nobody understood what we were doing.”
The second pivot addressed distribution. From 2016, the company moved to a direct-to-consumer model, building an app and shifting customers to monthly prepayments. This reduced dependence on intermediaries and stabilised cash flows. By 2019, annual revenue had reached about Rs 30 crore, enough to demonstrate that the model could scale.
Capital followed execution. Lok Capital invested Rs 40 crore. During the pandemic, when demand patterns turned volatile, Nithin Kamath invested Rs 5 crore, followed by a larger round in 2022. Subsequent funding came from the UK government and A91 Partners.
The operating metrics now reflect a different stage. In FY26, Akshayakalpa has turned profitable with Ebidta margins of about 8%. Monthly revenues are around Rs 50 crore, with sales split across its app, e-commerce platforms and retail. The company works with roughly 2,800 farmers across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, up from about 100 in 2019. Average payouts are about Rs 1.28 lakh per farmer per month. Cash reserves are close to Rs 200 crore.
One Village
The model, however, is not designed for rapid, centralised scale. Kumar describes it as “one farmer, one village” — creating local proof points that farming can deliver stable incomes. “If one farmer is making money, others will follow,” he says. Many in the network are in their early 30s, including former urban workers who have returned after seeing viable earnings.
Execution remains tied to inputs and training. The company works on feed management, calf rearing and organic practices to reduce costs and improve yields. The aim is to control variability at the farm level while ensuring predictable procurement and pricing at the company level.
The next phase is geographic expansion and product diversification. Plans include launching buffalo milk in Telangana and entering the Mumbai-Pune corridor by FY27, where farmer networks have been under development since 2023. The emphasis remains on building supply before pushing demand.
Kumar says that income stability alone will not fully reverse the shift away from farming. Social perception remains a constraint. “My father still believes farmers will not be respected, even if they make good money,” he says. Changing that perception is part of the business objective.
The underlying proposition is simple: if farming can offer predictable, comparable incomes, labour will return. “We have shown that farming can be profitable,” Kumar says. “If we solve income uncertainty, young people will come back.”