Zerodha launches non-profit org Rainmatter Foundation to fight climate change

Zerodha has set up Rainmatter Foundation, a non-profit foundation that aims to support grassroots individuals and organisations, and companies working on problems related to climate change, with a focus on afforestation, ecological restoration, and livelihoods.

In May last year, Entrackr had reported that Nithin Kamath, his wife Seema Patil and brother Nikhil Kamath had incorporated a new entity called Rainmatter Land development. Kamath along with the help of interested third parties wants to build and conserve sustainable forests using modern techniques by partnering scientists and experts in this field. 

“Amongst our core beliefs is that moving to a green economy and creating green jobs is an essential part of the changes needed for a better ecology. We also think that this needs to happen in a distributed fashion across geographies, with value and job creation everywhere and not being limited to a few urban centres. Reversing both migration and concentration of value, wealth and resources are a major need towards this and will also need a strengthening of public goods and services across India,” said Nithin Kamath in a blog post.

Sameer Shisodia, former founder of The Farming Collective and Linger Leisure, has joined Rainmatter Foundation as the head of the foundation.

Rainmatter Foundation has committed a $100 million fund which will be disbursed as grants and funding for projects in the above directions that become replicable models. The foundation is also incubating and investing in entrepreneurship that helps with these directions and helps move towards a greener, more equitable and lower footprint economy. 

The foundation has already invested in Terra, an online climate school training climate entrepreneurs on climate science, policy, business, social justice, and Blue Sky Analytics, which provides real-time and predictive environmental intelligence.

Rainmatter, a fintech fund and incubator backed by Zerodha, helps startups to leapfrog all the infrastructural and regulatory complexities with investment in the range of $100K-$1 million. The initiative has invested in some of the notable startups including Smallcase, Streak, Sensibull, Learnapp, Goldenpi, Digio, Quicko, and Finshots.