This Bengaluru start-up pitches for ‘profit for the planet’ Premium
The Hindu
Exploration of ways to monetise land without exploiting it led to the birth of Mycelium, a Bengaluru-based start-up that aims to buy private lands outside of protected forests and conserve or restore these spaces.
When Bengaluru-based serial entrepreneur Nishanth Prasannan moved to Kodagu with his family in 2016, it was an escape from the hustle and bustle of the city.
In his own words, Mr. Prasannan, an urban dweller until then, developed quite a “romantic” association with Kodagu, which was all so green and misty. It lasted for about two years. The heavy rains and landslides that shattered Kodagu in 2018 woke him up to reality with a jolt.
“The year 2018 made me realise that not everything green is beautiful,” says Mr. Prasannan. When India’s State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2021 came out last year, environmentalists and conservation experts called out how the report had counted plantations as forests, which was misleading. “Forest cover is a skewed concept. Our landscape has been abused for years, and the abuse is not visible because it’s all green.”
Mr. Prasannan, along with Abhishek Jain, who is a naturalist based out of Kodagu, then started probing ways to monetise land without exploiting it. This led to the birth of Mycelium, a Bengaluru-based start-up that aims to buy private lands outside of protected forests and conserve or restore these spaces.
“We are not buying land for real estate purposes. Our idea is to look at rapidly depleting forests and pause that depletion. We are looking at private lands adjacent to forest or corridors of sorts that are prone to conflicts and then taking them off the market,” says Vinod Chandramouli, who joined as a co-founder in 2022
Mycelium takes the help of individuals who care for the cause and would invest money into it. They form a “collective”. The money is used to buy the land and develop the habitat. “The collective members do not get demarcated pieces of land, but equity in the company,” Mr. Chandramouli clarifies.
The start-up aims to conserve 10,000 acres of Western Ghats by 2035 and is currently finalising the registration of its first property, a 70-acre land near Pushpagiri. Named Dancing Frog Habitat, it has four collective members as of now.