In December 2022, on the Earthshot Prize stage in Boston, Prince William announced a winner that made India sit up. A startup from Telangana called Kheyti, awarded one million pounds for an invention with the humblest possible name. A greenhouse in a box.
The story behind it is a masterclass in how to build for real people. Before writing a single business plan, founders Kaushik Kappagantulu, Sathya Raghu, Ayush Sharma and Saumya Sahay spent six months travelling across India, talking to close to 1,000 farmers. What they heard repeatedly was the sound of climate change hitting the smallest farms hardest. Unpredictable rain, scorching heatwaves, pest attacks worsening with every season. India's roughly 100 million smallholder farmers, among the poorest people on the planet, were absorbing the full force of a crisis they did not create.
Kheyti's answer, launched in 2015, was a greenhouse redesigned for exactly these farmers. Modular, simple, and about 90 percent cheaper than a standard greenhouse, sized to fit a fraction of a small plot. The numbers it produced sound like fiction. Crops inside need up to 98 percent less water than those grown outside. Yields rise as much as seven times. Farmer incomes more than double, and Kheyti pairs every unit with training and support so the technology actually works in the field, not just in the brochure.
The Earthshot Prize, dubbed the Eco Oscars, put the startup on the world map, and Prince William has even served food grown in a Kheyti greenhouse at a London event. Since the win, Kheyti has grown five times over, working toward a goal of 50,000 farmers with greenhouses in the coming years.
Climate change is a giant problem. Kheyti's answer fits in a box, and that is exactly why it works.
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16 August 2026 à 13h30
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