Our story

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

When Kailash (opens in a new tab) comes on board and starts Zerodha’s technology initiative, one of the first things he does is set up proper segregation of waste in the office and educate people about it. This is the seed that eventually germinates into Rainmatter Foundation. Over the next many years, a climate angst and grief ridden Kailash has endless conversations with Nithin (opens in a new tab) 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.

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.

As Zerodha grows more successful, it starts supporting a few environmental projects. In the meanwhile, a large number of alarm bells start 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.

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.

While the foundation is being set up, they happen to meet Sameer (opens in a new tab), who had left behind his career in technology and moved to Coorg to experiment with sustainable farming, farm collectives, and the rejuvenation of soil and forests. Despite being an ardent sceptic 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 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.

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 on building a broad platform that dives deep and strategically connects projects and organisations working in the space towards a common goal.

The team works with partner organisations and the broader ecosystem to design Rainmatter Foundation’s role as an ecosystem weaver. The focus areas we started with mature: Urban, Rural, Conservation & Restoration, and Messaging.

After five and a half years of building the core guiding principles and strategies, Sameer moves into an Ecosystem Fellow role.

Sathya (opens in a new tab) takes over as the new CEO, having worked at the intersections of technology, public policy and citizen action for nearly three decades.

Building on the base of solid support to partners, Sathya takes on the mantle of shaping the trajectory and velocity of work on natural assets becoming central to the nation’s development.