Akshayakalpa is known as India’s first certified organic dairy enterprise. But in this conversation, Shashi Kumar makes it clear that the deeper story has always been farming.

In this episode of the Prime Venture Partners Podcast, Jerome Manuel speaks with Shashi Kumar, Founder & CEO of Akshayakalpa, about building at the farm level for 16 years, far away from the usual startup playbook of fast growth, quick scale and easy metrics.

Akshayakalpa began with dairy because farmers needed reliable cash flow. Once that started working, the model expanded into animal care, soil management, manure-making, beekeeping, backyard poultry and diversified farms.

Today, Akshayakalpa is a profitable ₹60-crore-a-month business working with 2,800 farmers, including 1,200 women farmers. Last financial year, the average monthly payout to each farming family was ₹1.28 lakh.

The conversation explores:

• Why Akshayakalpa raised no institutional money for 9 years

• Why Shashi refused to sell investors a hypergrowth story

• How Nithin Kamath invested ₹5 crore in 5 days during the pandemic

• Why 27 people took equity in the company when it was struggling

• Why each cluster takes nearly 7 years to build

• How 2,800 farmers produce what would conventionally need nearly 100,000 farmers

• Why 45,000 customers visited Akshayakalpa farms

• Why premium pricing is a value play

• What founders can learn from building with patience and truth

For founders building in India, this episode is a reminder that every great company does not have to be built by chasing the fastest story.

Some are built by saying the harder thing early, and still finding the right people to believe in it.

Episode Timestamps

00:00 - Introduction

00:38 - What Akshayakalpa is really building

02:06 - Why young people are moving away from farming

10:17 - Making farming economically viable again

15:37 - Scaling through role models, clusters and culture

32:16 - Why Akshayakalpa started with dairy

39:13 - The first 9 years: struggle, frugality and survival

46:02 - Building customer trust through farm visits

48:09 - Why premium pricing is a value play

51:08 - Organic food and the challenge of fundraising in farming

1:15:42 - Investor expectations, Nithin Kamath and long-term capital

1:18:10 - What still keeps Shashi up at night

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