Introducing Greening India

On Eternal’s 17th birthday, we’re planting something that’ll outlive all of us.

Today, I’m happy to share something close to my heart — Greening India

This is not just a project. It’s a quiet promise to the Earth, and to India’s farmers.

Over the next year or so, we’ll be planting over 2.5 million trees across 10,000 acres of land in India. These trees, once grown, will help pull 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the air — slowly, quietly, patiently — over the next 30 years. That’s like taking over 3 lakh petrol cars off the road for a year.

But it’s not just about climate.

The magic of this initiative is that it’s not happening on empty land. It’s happening on farmland, with the support of thousands of farmers who are planting fruit and timber trees on land they already own and work on. Done well, agroforestry (which is just a fancy word for combining trees with farming) can boost farmer incomes by 50% to 200% over time — depending on what’s planted, where, and how it’s sold.

We’ve already partnered with 2,000+ farmers across Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Punjab to bring this to life on 4,500 acres — and we’re just getting started. By the end of FY26, we hope to have all the trees planted. From FY28, we expect the first carbon credits to be generated, which will help us meet our voluntary climate goals.

If this works — and if it continues to make sense financially for the farmers and for us — we’ll scale it up further.

Over the years, at Eternal, we’ve tried to make small, quiet choices that are better for the planet. We were one of the first companies in India to switch to EV deliveries at scale. Today, more than 50,000 delivery partners across Zomato and Blinkit use electric vehicles — cutting per km emissions by over 10% since 2022. For the last three years, we’ve also made all food deliveries carbon neutral by buying credits from clean energy projects in India.

We do all this not because someone told us to — but because we choose to.

Greening India is the next step in that journey, after Feeding India, as part of our growing set of quiet commitments — each designed to give back more than we would ever want to take from our country, and our planet.

If you’re someone building in this space, or just someone with an idea that could make us better — I’d love to hear from you. Write to us at greeningindia@eternal.com

Here’s to going beyond business as usual. And giving back more than we take.

Rooting for India (pun intended),

Deepinder Goyal