Kaushik Kappagantulu ’17 on Empowering India’s Small Farmers, Scaling Kheyti, and Rethinking Social Enterprise

In this episode of More MPE, hosts Ray Horton and Sandi Wright speak with Kaushik Kappagantulu ’17, co-founder and CEO of Kheyti, a groundbreaking social enterprise. Kappagantulu shares his journey from the conventional career in engineering his parents favored to founding a social enterprise aimed at lifting millions of India’s small farmers out of poverty. Columbia Business School played an important, but somewhat atypical role, in the development of Kheyti.

The inspiration for Kheyti (also a portfolio member in our Tamer Fund for Social Ventures) was Kappagantulu’s recognition that weather changes resulting from climate change were reducing the crops and thus the income of India’s already impoverished farmers. In response, he and his colleagues developed a plan whose centerpiece is an easy-to-assemble greenhouse which, combined with other initiatives, would materially increase crop production and incomes.

Since Kheyti currently serves 10,000 farmers, scaling the plan is Kheyti’s challenge and Kappagantulu’s obsession. Among other things, he discusses why Kheyti needs to evolve from a traditional nonprofit funded by donations to a profitable organization funded by earned income; how this will create a market for Kheyti-like services that will attract competitors throughout India; and how the state-by-state government of India government plays an indispensable role in facilitating the transition.

Mentioned in this Episode

• Kaushik Kappagantulu ’17

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More MPE is co-hosted by Sandi Wright and produced by The Podcast Consultant. Special thanks to executive producer Hannah Slow and student producers Sofia Martins '26 and Dominica Wambold '26.

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