About us

Founded in 2021, we are a non-profit organisation that supports organisations and projects for climate action, a healthier environment, and livelihoods associated with them. We recognise that climate change is the biggest existential threat to life as we know it. We have committed to using the resources available to us to enable, and to attempt to replicate at scale, the potential solutions that may help address at least some of these threats, and aid in the restoration of our natural ecosystems.

If you are experienced or passionate about this space and would like to work with us, get in touch with us.

Team

Founders

Our journey

2010

Rainmatter Foundation’s origin begins with the founding of Zerodha (the financial services firm) in 2010 and its subsequent growth over the next decade to being an industry leader. This growth is rooted in strong first principles approach and deep philosophical convictions including never advertising, to grow slowly and organically being bootstrapped, and to only ever focus on quality for customers.

2013

In 2013, when Kailash comes onboard Zerodha starting its technology initiative, one of the first things he does is to setup proper seggregation of waste in the office and educate people about it. This is the seed that eventually germinates into the Rainmatter Foundation. Over the next many years, a climate angst and grief ridden Kailash has endless conversations with Nithin about its perils. Along the way, many business practices and decisions at Zerodha are based on the principles of minimalism and frugality, including an early push to eliminate the use of paper in what was a heavily paper dependent industry.

2015

By 2015, they are actively meeting people to understand how to support initiatives beyond the business to grow the industry ecosystem with the philosophy that for any organisation to thrive, there has to be a healthy, thriving ecosystem around it as well. This initiative becomes Rainmatter Capital, a fintech fund.

2018

By 2018, as Zerodha grows more successful, it starts supporting a few environmental projects. In the meanwhile, a large number of alarm bells starts ringing all across the world and the dangers of climate change and environmental destruction start becoming apparent. This deepens the conviction that without a healthy planet, there would not be much else to do meaningfully.

2019

Nithin and Kailash start meeting people working in the environmental and conservation space, actively looking for someone to lead a serious effort to take over the part time ad-hoc work they had been doing. That these efforts must be structured as a non-profit organisation becomes clear.

2020

While the foundation is being setup, they happen to meet Sameer, who had left behind his career in technology and moved to Coorg to experiment with sustainable farming, farm collectives, and rejuvenation of soil and forests. Despite being an ardent skeptic of industry in general, Sameer’s philosophies align with the vision for Rainmatter Foundation, and he comes on board full time to lead it. This also gives him a platform to scale up the experiments that he had been trying in this space.

With Sameer on board and a commitment of $100 million from Zerodha to be invested in projects that address environmental and climate problems, Rainmatter Foundation officially kick starts.

2022

Under Sameer’s leadership, the foundation grows into an independent team focused not just on managing grants and funding organisations (where the endowment grows to $200 million), but building a broad platform that dives deep and strategically connects projects and organisations working in the space towards a common goal.