Mitti Labs: Using Satellites and AI to Change How India Grows Rice

Mitti Labs at a Glance

What Is Mitti Labs?

Mitti Labs is a Bengaluru-headquartered climate tech startup, co-founded in 2023 by Devdut Dalal and Xavier Laguarta Soler. The company uses satellite imagery and AI to support water-efficient farming practices — with a specific focus on rice cultivation, one of India's most water-intensive crops — while also generating verified carbon credits from the emission reductions these farming practices produce.

Business Model

Mitti Labs operates a dual-revenue model characteristic of the carbon-credit-generating climate tech category:

1. Carbon credit sales — the company generates carbon credits from verified emission reductions achieved through water-efficient farming methods, then sells these credits to corporations pursuing net-zero commitments
2. Agritech services — satellite and AI-driven monitoring tools that help farmers adopt and verify more water-efficient cultivation practices

This model aligns the company's commercial incentives with genuine on-ground agricultural change — carbon credit revenue depends on actual, measurable emission reductions, not just technology adoption.

Funding History

Why Saudi Aramco's VC Arm Is Backing an Indian Agritech Startup

Aramco Ventures' investment is notable given the company's roots in the oil and energy sector — reflecting a broader trend of energy majors diversifying into climate tech and carbon markets as part of their own net-zero strategy and portfolio diversification, rather than a departure from their core business.

Market Position

Mitti Labs sits at the intersection of two fast-growing categories — climate tech and agritech — both of which saw strong investor interest in the same week as this round, alongside companies like InRisk Labs in climate risk analytics. Rice cultivation specifically is a significant focus area given both its outsized water consumption and its methane emissions profile, making water-efficiency improvements in rice farming a meaningful lever for both agricultural sustainability and carbon credit generation.

What the Funding Will Likely Support

Series A capital for a company at this stage typically goes toward expanding satellite/AI monitoring coverage to more farming regions, scaling farmer onboarding and training for water-efficient practices, and building out the verification infrastructure needed to certify carbon credits to the standards corporate buyers require.

Why Rice Farming Specifically

Rice cultivation is disproportionately water- and emissions-intensive compared to most other staple crops — flooded paddy fields are a significant source of methane emissions, a greenhouse gas with a much higher near-term warming effect than CO2. India is among the world's largest rice producers and exporters, meaning even modest efficiency improvements across the country's rice-growing regions can translate into a meaningful aggregate reduction in both water use and methane output — which is precisely the kind of large-scale, measurable impact that makes a crop attractive for carbon credit generation programs.

How Carbon Credit Markets Work

Carbon credits are generated when a verified, measurable reduction in greenhouse gas emissions occurs relative to a baseline (in this case, relative to conventional flooded rice farming practices). Companies like Mitti Labs typically work with independent verification standards to certify that claimed reductions are real, additional (meaning they wouldn't have happened without the intervention), and permanent enough to qualify. Once verified, these credits can be sold to corporations seeking to offset their own emissions as part of net-zero commitments — creating a revenue stream that's directly tied to genuine environmental outcomes rather than just software or hardware sales.

Frequently Asked Questions

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