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
Sameer Shisodia CEO
CEO
Sameer Shisodia
Sameer heads the Rainmatter foundation and does deep dives on building a robust network of climate orgs with strategic application of the funding and grants program. He left his long career in the tech industry a decade ago and partly moved to Coorg to experiment with sustainable farming, farm collectives, and his personal passion, rejuvenating soil and forests. He runs Linger as a hobby, and shares his thoughts regularly on his blog
Rajiv Prakash
Rajiv is an adviser to the Foundation. His interest areas are nurturing entrepreneurship from non-metro & rural India, developing rural livelihoods and sustainable consumption models, and local change-making platforms. Post his corporate career and over the past decade, Rajiv has focused on working closely with category-defining founders on their 0 to 1 startup journeys. As a member of a farming collective, he hopes to reconnect with his farming roots soon.
Mohit Mehra
Mohit reviews projects, investments, and grants at the foundation. He is passionate about experiments with farming ideas and the development of livelihood skills.
Siddharth Rao
Siddharth is a field-based conservation biologist and development practitioner with a career spanning over two decades. His work focuses on restoration ecology, community-led conservation, environmental justice, carnivore ecology, markets for conservation, and conservation outreach and education. He lives on an off-grid field station in the Deccan savannah grasslands of South India.
Somnath Mukherjee
Som has a background in law, and is enthusiastic about all things around startups & markets. He helps with legal matters at the foundation including reviewing and research of organisations, opportunities.
Varun Balakrishnan
Varun manages the Elephants by the Lake project (EBTL) at the foundation. Also prefers short bios.
Vikas Hosoor
Vikas works on soil, farming and localisation efforts of the foundation. He has been working on natural farming for 4 years, and has tried a couple of initiatives in the farm to fork space. He also has a keen interest in making simple and affordable agri implements to reduce the drudgery of women farmers. Eco-friendly construction and waste recycling are his other areas of interest.
Mohammed Shoaib
Shoaib handles fund and project administration and liaising with organisations that the foundation supports.
Viraj Joshi
Viraj has a legal background, and handles risk and compliance at the foundation. His drive for sustainability took shape while on a trek in 2017, when it became impossible to ignore the extensive damage caused to fragile Himalayan ecosystems on account of over-tourism and human excess.
Sagar Gudekote
Sagar likes to be known as the Chief Serendipity Officer at Rainmatter. He believes that ideas can surface from anywhere and loves to hear out everyone's perspectives. He has relentless drive for networking and partnerships. He's also involved in all things related to content.
Akshatha Narayana
Akshatha is an architect whose passion for art and built environment with locally rooted knowledge fuse seamlessly with her interest in consciously built spaces. Hailing from coastal region, she often finds herself painting in the laps of nature. At Rainmatter, she focuses on how can we build better built environment and also works for Rural Change.
Nayantara Lakshman
Nayantara is working at Rainmatter Foundation, exploring new ways to conserve and restore natural ecosystems through systems thinking.
Sailee Rane
Sailee focuses on' Ecosystem messaging' at Rainmatter. She has previously worked in consulting, Fintech and investments in climate. She is currently trying to answer the question of the most effective way to talk about climate change and its related issues to different stakeholders to drive the changes we need. She is passionate about simplifying narratives around environment and climate and writes a newsletter 'Sunny climate Stormy climate' with the aim to make climate change a part of daily conversations.
Siddharth Lahri
Siddharth works in the CEO's office, focusing on grant strategies and building ecosystems with a climate-conscious approach. Having grown up in one of India's most polluted districts, he's driven by a desire to make a difference and explore solutions. Always eager for a conversation, Siddharth enjoys connecting with others and sharing a laugh.
Sathyanarayanan Shankaran
Sathya is the strategy lead for the Urban vertical at the Foundation. He brings three decades of experience in using tech and data to solve Urban issues in Mobility and Energy. Apart from his work with Rainmatter, he is the architect of AltMo, a gamified mobility intelligence platform for the future of climate friendly cities, and the host of India's premiere urban affairs podcast, OoruLabs. He is an adjunct faculty teaching Urban Governance for masters students, a Director at the waste management startup, Bioman and the Bicycle Mayor of Bengaluru.
Tanmay Mukherji
Tanmay comes with an experience of close to 25 years of running his own Industry in the Automotive sector. Catering to major OEMs in India and abroad across 4 plants in India and a JV in Germany. In 2021 he exited his business to work in the grassroots. Spent about a year volunteering in Ladakh with Sonam Wangchuk converting his ideas into businesses that could fund the Institute operations. Post that he worked for 2 years in Rural India with mainly women nano entrepreneurs helping them make the business more sustainable and earn better. He now leads the Strategy for Entrepreneurship and Localised Production at Rainmatter. He is also working on the Platformisation initiative with various partners towards a Green Rural Economy. Tanmay also mentors startups and runs a small lab where he solves challenges in the sustainability domain. He is a TEDx Speaker and loves to engage with students.
Vartika Goel
Vartika looks at ecosystem messaging and communications. After a decade of building products and driving growth in tech startups, Vartika's sabbatical travels proved to be a turning point when she witnessed the widespread impact of climate change across India. She now focuses on crafting and amplifying the narratives of the incredible organizations working on solutions and empowering more people to become part of the solution.
Spoorthi V
Spoorthi handles human resource operations and supports the overall HR functions of the foundation.
Medha Raje Singh
Medha works in the CEO's office and manages grants and partnerships. She is committed to working on bridging the gap in climate finance and working on climate education pedagogy. Ironically, despite being a passionate advocate for conservation, Medha's houseplants seem to be the only greenery she can't save!
Ashwin Shrikant Kulkarni
With over a decade of experience in the tech industry as a Partner Manager, Ashwin brings a unique blend of corporate insight and social impact sensibility to the table. He is focussed on building ecosystems, identifying critical gaps, and fostering strategic collaborations to address pressing climate challenges. Ashwin is committed to driving partnerships that create meaningful social and environmental impact.Directors
Sameer Shisodia CEO
CEO
Sameer Shisodia
Sameer heads the Rainmatter foundation and does deep dives on building a robust network of climate orgs with strategic application of the funding and grants program. He left his long career in the tech industry a decade ago and partly moved to Coorg to experiment with sustainable farming, farm collectives, and his personal passion, rejuvenating soil and forests. He runs Linger as a hobby, and shares his thoughts regularly on his blog
Kailash Nadh
Kailash co-founded Rainmatter Foundation at Zerodha with Nithin, driven by his angst and despair about human callousness, environmental destruction, and climate change as a result. At the foundation, he helps with whatever is necessary to push its goals and vision forward. His life's trajectory and the biggest decisions in it are driven by his climate angst.
Seema Patil
Seema is curious about climate challenges that we face and wants to spend time learning from all the non-profit organisations working on solutions that are long term and sustainable.Founders
Kailash Nadh
Kailash co-founded Rainmatter Foundation at Zerodha with Nithin, driven by his angst and despair about human callousness, environmental destruction, and climate change as a result. At the foundation, he helps with whatever is necessary to push its goals and vision forward. His life's trajectory and the biggest decisions in it are driven by his climate angst.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.