Date
16th December 2025, Tuesday
Time
11:30 AM – 3:00 PM
Venue
S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai
Why this dialogue matters
Agroecology, with its focus on systemic transitions through landscape-based approaches, is pivotal for building a climate-resilient and sustainable future for India. The most innovative solutions in this space are emerging from the grassroots, driving a vital transformation of the agroecological ecosystem. These initiatives are proving essential for achieving landscape-level change, restoring ecosystems, enhancing food security, and revitalising rural economies.
This transformation is increasingly driven by the integration of renewable energy, such as solar-powered applications and agrivoltaics, with circular economy models that create value from crop waste. The result is a more productive, resilient, and economically vibrant rural landscape. Spearheaded by women farmers, early-stage innovators, and local entrepreneurs, these initiatives possess the deep local knowledge necessary to deliver transformative impact at scale.
While these grassroots efforts form the bedrock of this ecosystem transformation, their potential is constrained by a critical bottleneck: a persistent financing gap. Mainstream domestic capital from philanthropy, CSR, and family offices predominantly flows to larger, established organisations, leaving these high-potential ventures without the patient, flexible finance, and blended capital required to validate and scale their models.
The Vasudha Dialogue is a strategic response to this gap. It initiates a collaborative process to co-design new financial vehicles that can effectively channel domestic capital into grassroots-led agroecological transformation, fostering systemic ecosystem transformation.
Objectives
Collectively investigate the structural bottlenecks preventing philanthropy, CSR, and family offices from flowing to agroecological innovators and ecosystem enablers.
Co-create potential models for a blended capital fund that leverages philanthropic, CSR, and private capital to de-risk early-stage innovation, particularly in areas like agroecological transformation.
Gauge Interest and Build Consensus on the need for a collaborative funding structure that supports both for-profit and non-profit pathways to system change.
Identify key principles for designing a fund that is both financially sound and maximally impactful for early-stage innovators and grassroots entrepreneurs.
Who will be in the room
A carefully curated group of 20–25 participants, including:
- Family offices, and domestic philanthropies with an investment and sustainability lens
- CSR leaders aligned with climate, sustainability, and livelihoods
- Ecosystem organisations and accelerators supporting grassroots innovators
- Early-stage innovators and entrepreneurs (for first-hand perspectives from the ground)
- Global philanthropy voices for cross-learning and sectoral context
- Academics and researchers bringing insights from non-profit and social enterprise models
Format
- Provocations: Short, sharp inputs from grassroots innovators, funders, and family offices.
- Facilitated roundtable: Open dialogue on opportunities and bottlenecks in capital flow.
- Sectoral lens: Mix of for-profit and non-profit innovators to highlight both equity and philanthropic needs.
- Co-creation: Joint ideation on pooled structures and collaborative approaches.
- Action-oriented: Concluding session focused on outlining a concrete pathway and immediate next steps toward establishing a dedicated fund for grassroots agroecology transformation.
Expected outcomes
- A shared diagnosis of the grassroots financing challenge and a collective will to address it.
- Tangible insights into the feasibility and design of a potential blended capital fund dedicated to early-stage grassroots initiatives.
- A preliminary blueprint of core principles and structural options for such a fund.
- A clearer pathway for interested parties to engage in subsequent, more detailed design phases.