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August 1, 2026
Murali K Menon, Firstpost
1 August 2026
The next time you are shopping for veggies on a quick commerce app, we’d suggest you hop onto the organic produce section and consider where those vegetables came from. Chances are, they have travelled through a supply chain pretty different from the one that bought veggies to your kitchen just five years ago. Some of that produce is supplied by Urban Farms Co., a little-known company that is rethinking food systems.
Urban Farms works with about 2,000 small farmers on the outskirts of several of India’s cities, as well as in states like Rajasthan and Maharashtra to grow vegetables using regenerative practices and supplies them to urban consumers via quick commerce and modern retail. The definition of renegenrative agriculture changes depending on who you ask, but broadly it refers to an approach that seeks to restore soil health, as opposed to conventional, chemical-intensive farming.
About 1% of global farmland is now under regenerative practices, according to a 2025 World Resources Institute study. Urban Farms, whose farmer network grows over 50 varieties of vegetables, handles around 12,000 tonnes annually and is targeting a twenty-fold jump in revenue from its current Rs 30 crore in the next five years.
That target might sound ambitious until you look at its origins. Urban Farms was founded by members of the team behind Araku Coffee, the specialty coffee brand that put Indian coffee on the global map. Both Araku Coffee and Urban Farms are backed by the Hyderabad-based Naandi Foundation, among the country’s largest, multi-sector non-profits. The NGO was set up by Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories founder, the late Kallam Anji Reddy, and counts Kris Gopalakrishnan and Anand Mahindra on its board.
The broad details of Araku Coffee’s success are well known, but the model that underpins it is much less discussed. Over two decades, the project worked with thousands of tribal farmers to promote regenerative farming practices, restore degraded land, and improve farmer incomes while building a globally recognised premium coffee brand. The same spirit animates Urban Farms. Instead of tribal farmers, it works with small farmers on the outskirts of India’s cities. Instead of a premium export crop, it is betting on everyday vegetables sold through quick commerce and modern retail. But can a model proven in a premium niche survive in the toughest, most commoditised part of Indian agriculture?
Beyond coffee
Coffee was just a conversation-starter, says Manoj Kumar, the lead architect of the Araku Coffee project and the founding CEO of the Naandi Foundation. The developmental economist says that the project proved two things. “It proved at scale that our regenerative organic agricultural science worked for 20 years in every crop, from coffee to millet, consistently season after season, without any drop in yield. And, just as importantly, that we could do world-class excellence at scale with very ordinary poor people.”
The eventual goal was improving farmer economics. “In India, 85% of farmers have less than one hectare of land,” Kumar says. “The question is: what do we do with small and marginal farmers?” Urban Farms is one answer to that question. Unlike Araku Coffee, though, it isn’t built around a single crop.
“Urban Farms is about doing a system change. We are changing food systems,” says Vikash Abraham, the company’s CEO. So, what does that mean for something as everyday as a lady finger? Before it reaches your kitchen, Urban Farms is involved in almost every stage of its journey. It supplies regenerative fertilisers to farmers, works with them through the growing season, buys back their produce, and sells it to retailers and quick commerce platforms.
Urban Farms
“We procure from the farmer at the same price as conventional produce. We do not pay a premium per kilogram because we believe profitability is about cost of cultivation versus the entire income you get from your farm,” Abraham says. In other words, with Urban Farms, farmers don’t earn more because they sell lady finger at a higher price. They earn more because regenerative farming lowers their costs while giving them an assured buyer. A typical vegetable grower could earn as much as Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000 more per acre annually, says Abraham, with savings increasing over time. A first-season comparison conducted by the company across 56.5 acres in Wardha, Maharashtra, found that soybean yields rose 12% and total cultivation costs fell by 8%.
Spending on farm inputs dipped from ₹9,750 to ₹5,267 per acre, while profits increased from ₹12,550 to ₹19,195. The model does not rely on government subsidies and farmers pay for the inputs themselves. According to Abraham, Urban Farms doesn’t approach farmers from a moral standpoint, or talk about climate change. “We go to them with a business proposition, and the business proposition is about making profitability.”
From trial to habit
Urban Farms’ residue-free vegetables generally cost about 40% more than conventional produce, although the gap varies by crop, market prices, and platforms. Lady finger, for instance, was priced at ₹24 for a 250gm pack on Zepto in Azadpur, in north Delhi, earlier this week compared with ₹17 for conventional produce; on Blinkit, the same pack was sold at ₹35.
Quick commerce accounts for 65% of its business under the residue-free category, with modern trade and other channels making up the rest. Abraham says part of that premium reflects the cost of maintaining a separate, traceable supply chain. The company supplies Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy, and Flipkart as well as Reliance, Jubilant, and Country Delight, among others.
Devangshu Dutta, founder of retail consultancy Third Eyesight, says that he expects demand to grow, as incomes rise and consumers become more conscious of the food they are eating. But he thinks a 40% premium may be too high for regular consumption because vegetables, unlike coffee or craft chocolate, are staples.
“You could have a premium of maybe 20% to 30%. Some products could be higher than that, but that is something that has to be managed carefully.” For category growth to accelerate, he says, the produce must become “a fixture in the consumer’s pantry, in the consumer’s kitchen, on the consumer’s plate.”
Dutta believes that quick commerce is well-suited to fresh produce because Indian households have traditionally bought vegetables frequently rather than stocking up. “The bottleneck really is having the product range that consumers will buy over a period of time again and again.” That requires farmers growing different crops across regions and climatic zones. And building a wide range of vegetables also means working with farmers and ensuring farmer retention in the system season after season. “You don’t just sign up a farmer and say he’s going to be there forever,” Dutta says.
Urban Farms says it has managed to do that so far. In May this year, Anand Mahindra posted on X that 80 to 90% of the farmers who work with the company return every season. “Not out of loyalty to a movement, but because the economics work,” he wrote, pointing to yields comparable with conventional farming, lower input costs and produce that consistently tests residue-free.
Abraham says that Urban Farms would like to work with about 100,000 farmers by 2030, and the company’s growth will depend on how quickly it can both build and nurture relationships with its partners across the country. Applying the Araku model to a far more unpredictable market won’t be easy, but if Urban Farms can keep both farmers and shoppers in the system as it grows, coffee, as Manoj Kumar said, may indeed have been just the conversation-starter.
(Published in Firstpost)
admin
August 1, 2026
Two decades ago, the team at the Naandi Foundation turned tribal farmers in a remote Andhra valley into some of the world’s best-paid coffee growers. Araku Coffee now sells in Paris, and the best of it goes for thousands of rupees a kilogram. Now the same team is trying to do it again — this time with everyday vegetables. Their company, Urban Farms Co., works with regenerative farmers and sells their produce on apps like Blinkit and Zepto. The bet is that what worked for premium coffee can work for staples too. But vegetables aren’t coffee. They’re cheap, everyday, and something people buy all the time. Can this really scale, and does it actually leave farmers better off?
