Ever imagined how India went from being one of the world’s largest rice exporters, with nearly 70 per cent of its population dependent on agriculture for a livelihood, to a country where a quintal of rice can cost around Rs 5,000? Inflation, erratic temperatures and a younger generation increasingly reluctant to take up farming are all part of the story. But one persistent challenge remains, the lack of access to appropriate technology.
On a mission to address this challenge for smallholder farmers, Kaushik Kappagantulu, an IIT-trained engineer who had never set foot in a village until he was 21, co-founded Kheyti Tech Private Limited in 2015 with Satya Raghu Mokkapati, Saumya Sahay and Ayush Sharma. A decade later,
the Hyderabad-based company operates across eight states, benefiting more than 30,000 farmers. Its interventions have reportedly helped farmers increase their incomes by 70 per cent while reducing crop losses by 58 per cent. “I had always believed success came from working hard. When I saw how hard people in villages worked and how little they got in return, I realised I had never worked a day in my life. It was simply not a level playing field,” Kaushik says.
The realisation led him to spend five years building vocational training centres for school dropouts in rural communities. He travelled for roughly 25 days every month. “I call those years my bachelor’s and master’s in rural India,” he says.
Almost every young person who walked through the doors of these centres belonged to a farming family. Many were dropping out of school because farming itself had stopped being a viable livelihood. “I felt like I was trying to stop a flood without seeing its source. So, the question became: can we make farming itself work?” he adds. The source, he and his co-founders discovered after speaking to more than a thousand farmers across several states and experiencing farming first-hand, was climate change, which was accelerating faster than traditional agricultural practices could adapt. Technologies to protect crops already existed, but most had not been designed for India’s small and marginal farmers, who typically own less than five acres and constitute the overwhelming majority of the country’s farming community.
El Niño’s blow to farms and commodity prices
El Niño has made this gap increasingly difficult to ignore. According to reports, in 2026, the southwest monsoon ended around 12–13 per cent below the long-period average, making it one of the weakest in more than a decade. Historical data suggests that during moderate or strong El Niño years, Kharif crop yields have fallen by an average of 8.4 per cent, while agricultural output has declined by as much as 10 per cent. Nearly half of India’s high-priority agricultural districts received less rainfall than required.
The effects soon reached consumers. Onion prices rose by 108 per cent year-on-year in September 2026, food inflation climbed to 7.7 per cent and overall retail inflation reached 5.5 per cent. Reservoirs were also running well below capacity, raising concerns about the upcoming rabi season. For a small farmer with just one or two acres and little savings to fall back on, a heatwave crossing 45°C or a week of unexpected rainfall can destroy an entire season’s income and push the family further into debt. The problem is straightforward: India’s farming practices were designed for a climate that no longer exists. The weather has changed, but much of our agricultural planning has yet to catch up. After all, the Pacific Ocean does not consult the farming calendar before disrupting the monsoon.
Greenhouse-in-a-box: Protection that fits small farms
Kheyti’s answer is the Greenhouse-in-a-box, a modular structure covered with breathable netting rather than glass or plastic. Starting at approximately 240 sqm, it occupies roughly five per cent of an acre. A shade cloth on top helps lower temperatures during summer, while the netting reduces pest attacks by approximately 90 per cent and allows heat to escape. The structure is engineered to withstand storms with wind speeds of up to around 100 kmph. It also comes with drip irrigation, which uses approximately 90 per cent less water than traditional flood irrigation. The package goes beyond the physical structure. It includes installation, maintenance, seeds, agricultural inputs, training and season-long advisory support. “The box is the easy part. The hard part is making sure every farmer earns more from it,” Kaushik notes.
An independent study conducted by research firm Sambodhi in 2025 compared 1,698 farmers across Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Jharkhand. It found that farmers using greenhouses experienced a 73 per cent increase in median income, while crop losses caused by extreme weather fell by 58 per cent. They also used approximately two-thirds less water and 70 per cent less fertiliser per kg of produce, while spending less on labour. Explaining the difference, Kaushik says, “The difference in earnings was striking. From the same 240 sqm of land, greenhouse farming generated an average net income of around Rs 32,000 a year, compared with just Rs 4,500 from open-field farming. Greenhouses allow farmers to grow high-value vegetables and saplings throughout much of the year, rather than relying on one or two harvests that depend on the monsoon. This means a more regular flow of income instead of having to wait months for the next harvest and hope the weather cooperates.”
Traditional greenhouses have generally been large, complicated and priced for commercial growers, often costing tens of lakhs of rupees. Kheyti’s version is approximately 80 per cent cheaper. Since the netting is breathable, the structure can be built lower, at around 10 feet, instead of the 20 feet often required in plastic greenhouses to allow heat to escape. This also reduces the amount of steel needed. The modular design allows farmers to start small and expand later, up to half an acre. It supports 30–40 crops that already have established local markets. The design went through approximately 10 iterations, incorporating feedback from more than a thousand farmers.
Convincing farmers to adopt the technology, however, was not easy. “Early adopters were deeply sceptical. We had designed it and conducted demonstrations, but convincing the first 30 farmers was an uphill battle,” Kaushik recalls, adding, “I went to those farms almost every day for a year. Then, at the first farmer meeting that year, the whole village wanted to know how to get one. That is when I knew it would work. The only proof point for a farmer is another farmer, and a greenhouse is visible from the road.”
Scaling up technology and partnerships
The vulnerability of farmers has worsened since 2015. What was once an occasional bad season has increasingly become a pattern of extreme heat, erratic rainfall, falling groundwater levels and new pest outbreaks. Farmers are cutting back on what they cultivate, shifting to lower-value crops to minimise risks and watching more young people leave agriculture. At the same time, their openness to practical technology has grown. Roughly 20–25 per cent of Kheyti’s farmers have invested their own money in a second greenhouse.
“Technology alone is not enough,” Kaushik emphasises. India already spends lakhs of crores supporting agriculture. The opportunity lies in directing a larger share of this investment towards assets that improve farmers’ incomes and build climate resilience.
Drip irrigation and solar pumps became mainstream partly because government schemes supported their adoption. After a decade of demonstrating its model with thousands of farmers, Kheyti now partners with five state governments, including Telangana, to deliver greenhouses through existing subsidy and loan channels. These greenhouses have an expected lifespan of 15 years once installed. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has validated the approach, while the central government has begun the process of including small-farmer greenhouses under the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture.
“Government is how we reach millions of farmers, not thousands,” he says. Technology, he explains, is integrated into almost every aspect of the company’s operations. “We are building towards tech-first, AI-led advisory. Over the last five years, our field team has documented about 20,000 crop seasons. This data now powers our AI tools. Farmers can send voice notes on WhatsApp and receive advice in their own language. AI-powered call centres and low-cost greenhouse sensors are also being introduced to help more farmers make better decisions about irrigation, temperature and pest risks,” he explains.
Ultimately, El Niño is not a villain with a moustache. It is a recurring natural phenomenon that amplifies the vulnerabilities of India’s rain-fed smallholder farming system. Solutions such as the Greenhouse-in-a-box demonstrate that practical and affordable protection is possible. Whether India treats such innovations as scalable agricultural infrastructure rather than isolated success stories will determine how many more seasons farming families can withstand before the next Pacific disruption.
Farmers behind the numbers
For Shabnam Topno, an indigenous farmer in Jharkhand, farming once meant working nearly ten hours a day in the paddy fields on her family’s one-acre plot. The annual income was approximately `30,000. With government support, she installed a greenhouse on five per cent of the land and began cultivating cucumbers, marigolds and beans. Across three growing cycles, she earned approximately Rs 70,000 more, representing a 232 per cent increase. The additional income helped keep her children in school and pay for medicines. She has since started a sapling nursery.
In Rajasthan, Aanchi Devi depended entirely on rainfall and cultivated a single millet crop every year on three acres. She repaid her greenhouse loan within two crop cycles and earned approximately Rs 2.2 lakh over four cycles. The additional income enabled her to buy two buffaloes and two cows. Money earned from selling milk helped her dig the family’s first rainwater-harvesting pond. Land that had once remained barren is now being cultivated again.
In Odisha, Sumitra Mahanta earned approximately Rs 1.5 lakh over two years by growing saplings. Living in a forested village where wild animals and heavy rainfall frequently destroyed open-field crops, she found the greenhouse a more reliable source of income. Her earnings helped enrol her daughter in a postgraduate programme, making her the first girl in the family to study at that level.
- Sania Tabassum