The 2025 Krishi.System Year in Review

2025 was not just another year. I turned forty with more grey hair. I rebranded my business identity to Krishi.System (from Agribusiness Matters) to face my deepest fear. I became a Mastery of Systems Leadership Fellow to confront my unconscious bias. My business transcended this industry’s stultifying binary curse of being either for-profit or not-for-profit. Community became the organizing logic of my work to challenge AI-driven sloppification of content. Ecosystem engineering took a life of its own.

Carl Jung was right: “Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.”

The work I will do for the rest of my life now seems clearer. The sacred geometry of my life’s work is an equilateral triangle that brings together the dimensions of Agriculture, Technology and Yoga. It’s an equilateral triangle because I practice Yoga everyday and strive to bring them in balance. Whenever I feel one side is not in balance, I work on them.

You can read this zen triangle as a business philosophy for outer work as much as it is a personal life philosophy for inner work.

The Yoga dimension focuses on “listening” as a life-transforming skill that listens to the ecosystem outside and the multitudes inside.

Recently, during a social gathering, I met the wife of an agripreneur who had earlier done my Agripreneurs' retreat. She movingly shared how her husband became a whole new person after the retreat. It was the most heartwarming feedback I received for my work this year. THAT's the ultimate benchmark I strive for in my agripreneur retreats.

The Technology dimension focuses on doing “weird” experiments that feels right for my business and personal growth. The Agriculture dimension focuses on accelerating the regenerative transition both for the world at large and for the forest inside.

I’ve spent a decade of life’s energy falling in love with each of these dimensions. During my early twenties, I thought I was destined to be a Yoga teacher. During my late twenties, I thought I was destined to be a Web 2.0 collaboration technologist. During my early thirties, I thought I was destined to be an organic farmer. Reality, as it turned out, had different plans.

All these energies have culminated beautifully in the fourth decade of my life to design a bespoke “occupassion” that rewards me abundantly for being who I am. Serendipitously, a dear friend sent me this DM last night.

Despite playing this solopreneurship game for six years, I suppose, I have not really moved past a feeling of “beginning again.” Perhaps, it must be the default state.

2024 Year in Review | 2023 Year in Review | 2022 Year in Review | 2021 Year in Review | 2020 Year in Review | The 2019 Starting Point when I quit my full-time job.

Evolution of bylines that accompanied this newsletter’s journey

How does one explain this evolutionary journey? My entrepreneurship thesis is such that when someone listens to them patiently, they inevitably end up with the question, “But how will you make money?”

It’s funny. When I quit a full-time job to become an entrepreneur, I had a strange resolve: I will not do anything just for the sake of money. People often become entrepreneurs to earn money and exit the Matrix. My case was the reverse.

That was me in my twenties, grooving and belting out one of my favourite numbers about making money:)

All along my life, I grew up in a household where money dictated everything. I wanted to step out of that Matrix and explore if I can design a life (not a business) that created abundance with not just financial wealth, but all the eight forms of wealth.

My entrepreneurship thesis was forged by the fires of idealism to create a yagna (sacred fire) of meaning that strengthened the commons to address the structural challenges of Indian Agriculture. Since my larger purpose was centered around strengthening the commons, my fundamental bet was that when the ecosystem becomes healthy enough to produce a surplus, the surplus should find a way to reach me.

My inspiration was aptly summed up by Dee Hock when he wrote, “Profit becomes a barking dog, begging to be let in”.

It has taken six years of working in this sector to reach this beautiful point where the surplus of the ecosystem has started ploughing as profits. With passage of time, I am discovering newer mycorrhizal networks of profits.

Even though “content” remains the weakest among the 3Cs, the flywheel across 3C’s of my business is creating a beautiful customer life-cycle. Agripreneurs who discover me through content and become subscribers of Krishi.system, eventually become a member of Agripreneurs community, take lead in organizing Agripreneur retreats or fund my ecosystemic non-profit projects and end up becoming either clients or referring me with potential consulting clients.

My consulting projects are becoming 100% ecosystem centric. Its uncanny to observe how both of my upcoming 2026 projects have a strong “listening” component, mirroring the sacred geometry of my work.

Without choosing either for-profit side/non-profit side, my work is now becoming a beautiful hybrid of for-profit and not-for-profit. Within my for-profit organizational structure, I was able to raise grant capital in my own terms for ecosystemic projects such as Living Gandhian series and personal projects such as Mastery of Systems Leadership.

I haven’t fully achieved my grant target for documenting Living Gandhian series. If you wish to sponsor, DM or email at venkyr@hey.com

I was also able to kickstart the project that scared the living daylights out of me: I mustered the courage to bring my great-grandfather's 1908 book on Agriculture to the world with a competent translator now working to publish the book in English and Tamizh in 2026.

The poignant shift in the air could be best captured by this picture. This picture and the event is special for it shows what happens when movements catch fire. When fire spreads, there is no centralizing authority that decides where and when fire must spread.

Fire simply spreads.

After the Coimbatore Agripreneurs retreat, few agripreneurs got together to meet at Arvind’s farm.

It has taken five retreats to observe the movement grow organically where a bunch of agripreneurs can come together and meet without me getting involved. And that was always the plan. I wanted this momentum to drive itself without me getting involved. And that’s how self organizing ecosystems work. When the ecosystem starts organizing on its own, deeper intelligence kicks in and discovers the logic of the ecosystem.

The agripreneur community is growing stronger by the day and core members are now suggesting ideas that I couldn’t have thought of.

I am gearing up for the next Regenerative Agripreneurs Retreat in Bhopal on the birthday of Dharampal on February 19th 2026. Few friends are taking the lead in productizing Founder Retreats beyond agritech. Few friends want to do “Failure Camp” for agritech in Bali in 2026. Few friends want to build a platform for founders. I am working with a few agripreneur friends to build a founder’s fund. My dear friend Amol is taking the lessons from agritech ecosystem engineering and experimenting with HRTech ecosystem engineering.

I will be teaching an agritech course in IRMA (now rebranded as Tribhuvan Sakhari University) in July 2026.

Starting from January 2026, I am kickstarting a project with Purpose to contribute towards building a social listening network of influencers/communicators that will amplify unsaid narratives in Indian agriculture. I am also kickstarting a project with Rainmatter Foundation as “Catalyst in Residence” to do ecosystem building for scaling regenerative agripreneurship in India.

Of course, this journey was as painful as much as it sounds like a bed of roses. There were several nerve-wracking disappointments along the way in 2025:

1. Substack and Stripe have made my life miserable with their recurring payment failures. Moving from Substack to Nas.io created tremendous amount of subscriber friction. Substack doesn’t have a clean way to close a paid newsletter, and asking subscribers to start afresh elsewhere is never easy. Right now, my work exists in two places: Content at Substack and Community (Events, Townhalls) at Nas.io. The non-profit Agripreneur community at Whatsapp. It is decentralized and distributed for good in one way. But, that creates its own friction and monetization challenges in another way.

2. I went through the complete journey of hype curve when it comes to the potential and reality of Digital Public Infrastructure. I was bullish about UKI; saw UKI fail miserably due to governance challenges, and now finally reached the Plateau of Productivity in understanding where DPI technologies can work and where they cannot. My upcoming 2026 book “DPI Change Agent” adequately captures this evolution.

If there is a method in all of this madness, it is best captured by Paul Millerd in this image: Ship, Quit and Learn

1. What can I ship quickly?

2. What’s the off-ramp? How do I design it for quitting? How quickly can I discover what is worth committing and what is not?

3. What does the experiment tell me about what to do next? (What did I learn)

I want to do projects that challenge me and get them off the ground to learn new things. The best thing about my business is that I can try weird experiments without anyone noticing or caring, quit if they drain me and continue if they feel worth committing to. Agripreneur Retreats was one such experiment. Now, with its impact, I’ve double-downed on it.

Here are few experiments I want to try in 2026:

1. As much as I built deeper relationships with agripreneurs, my relationship with investors (barring a few) has become shallow. During my recent “State of Agritech” podcast, Hemendra suggested I must do an Agri Investors Retreat in 2026. I want to do more programs and content programming for agri-investors in 2026. Inspired by Indus Valley Report, I wanted to launch an authoritative “State of Krishi” by August 2025 largely for the investor community. That didn’t happen. I have been squatting on the incomplete report for a while now. I want to launch this in early 2026.

2. I am doing ground research to organize a Krishi.System Land Reforms unconference in my typical retreat style informal setting. This project still scares the living daylights out of me. I hope to muster the courage and get this done in 2026 second half.

3. I want to do a fun comics for my seven and half year old rascal to explore the fundamentals of food and agriculture systems with him. I also want to build a flash cards for young farmers and agripreneurs. I want to productize Global Agritech 101 for young Bachelor Ag folks aspiring to become agripreneurs.

4. Three E-books are geared up for launch in 2026: 1) Decolonizing Agriculture (based on my seminar I did with regenerative farmers on my great-grand father’s book) 2) DPI Change Agent (based on my learnings from UKI Experiment) 3) Farm Laws (compiling my writings on Farm Laws)

5. A Comprehensive Course on History of Agriculture should be launched in 2026. I feel scared to talk about the history that could unsettle our cherished heroes and narratives.

To wrap things up, let me now review the Krishi.System content universe in detail.

I wrote 68 posts in 2025 (52 in 2024; 48 in 2023), with 30% increase in the quantity of my output. My content mix - paid: everyone- was in the ratio of 40:60. I covered around 25+ startups in India, 8+ outside India. I organized 11 Townhalls/Podcasts (6 paid; 5 free). I organized Agripreneur Meetups across Madurai, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Coimbatore. I organized Agripreneur Retreats in Chilika Lake (Odisha) and Coimbatore.

Annual Rituals:

1. 2025 Predictions for Indian and Global Agriculture

2. State of Agritech (2025) with OGs

Startup Shutdowns:

1. Why did Jiva shut down?

2. Why did BharatAgri shut down?

3. Why did FMC shut down?

4. Why did UKI shut down?

New Frameworks and Mental Models:

1. Hierarchy of Indian Food Retail

2. Physics of Agritech Startups

3. Welcome to the Surrogate Economy

Ministry of the Future:

1. ABM Briefing: India’s First Genome-Edited Rice

2. AI-Driven Artisanal Software Play

3. Reimagining Phosphorus: OCP Nutricrops and the Triple Super Promise

4. The Future of Fertilizers

5. Biochar is Overrated

Financing and Fintech Matters:

1. Meet the Indian Agritech IPO Contenders

2. Samunnati’s Trade Financing Conundrum

3. State of Agri-Fintech (2025)

The Dance of Policy Systems:

1. DPIisation of Indian Agriculture

2. India’s Biostimulant Sector Faces Regulatory Cholesterol

3. Is Small No Longer Beautiful?

4. How to Disrupt Feudal Structures For Forty Million Middle-class Indian Farmers?

5. Is Rain-fed Farming Dead?

Krishi.System Townhalls and Podcasts:

1. DPIisation of Indian Agriculture

2. State of Agri-Fintech (2025)

3. Enshittification of Agritech: Dialogue with Feroz Sheikh

4. Bold Futures of Indian Agrifood Systems

5. Agroecology-Agribusiness Dialogues (Part 1)

6. Agroecology-Agribusiness Dialogues (Part 2)

7. State of Water Systems with Dinesh Kumar

8. State of Bioenergy with Mateen and Ashwin

9. Agripreneurship Journey with Lokesh Singh

10. State of Agri-Mechanisation

11. State of Soil Testing

12. Towards Regenerative Cardamom

Contrarian Perspectives:

1. The Three Types of Agritech Startups

2. Maslow’s Hierarchy Be Damned

3. The Naive View of Impact

4. Agritech Labour Arbitrage 2.0

5. Time is the biggest leverage

6. Desert to Dining Table

7. The Reports of Food Security Fears Are Greatly Exaggerated

Sunday Reflections:

1. Sunday Reflections (DPI, Animal Husbandry, Ecosystem, Akshayakalpa, Living Gandhians)

2. Sunday Reflections (AI, Venture Studio, Loss Aversion)

3. Sunday Reflections (FMC, Microplastics, Biostimulant Regulatory Paralysis, Narratives of Transition)

4. Sunday Reflections (Farmers<>Entrepreneurs, Saudi Arabia, UPL, Food Waste)

5. Sunday Reflections (Beggaring History, Agritech-FPO Collaborations, Human Potential in Agriculture)

6. Sunday Reflections (Protected Cultivation, Physics of Agritech Startups, Future of Land Reforms)

7. Sunday Reflections (Industrial Agriculture Isn’t Going Away, Meaning Making Cycles, State of MFI, BioLumic, Otipy)

8. Sunday Reflections (GE Rice, Red Queen Effect, Sisyphean Mountains of Agripreneurship)

9. Sunday Reflections (Agrifood Life Sciences, Enshittification of Agritech, Exporting Water)

10. Sunday Reflections (Subsidies, Biochar, Agrivoltaics)

Meta and Announcements:

1. What Is Your Systems Change Stance?

2. Agribusiness Matters 5.0

3. Scaling Agritech Ecosystem Engineering

4. “Agribusiness Matters” is now “Krishi.System”

5. A special gift — Aug 10 (40th birthday)

I wish you a fantastic 2026! Yes, the world is headed towards a dark phase and we have no choice but to hold our grounds with flames of hope. Let’s do our bit and grow the forests of coherence that can create the beautiful world we wish to live in!

I will leave you with the powerful Silent Night, one of my favourite carols I sang back when I was a student in a salesian convent in chennai. Wish you a merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

If you would like to support this life work, you are most welcome to become a patron (Select Option 3-Patron and Supporter 120000/year) either here or in Nas.io (Patron: 10K INR per month)

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