Yearly tree-survival and canopy counts for companies holding Green Credit blocks
TL;DR Sprigtally counts, every year, how many planted trees are still alive and how thick the canopy is on land that companies are restoring under India's Green Credit Programme. Those companies pay per hectare. It could work because credits now hang on five years of survival evidence, and very few firms collect that evidence well.
Planting a tree is easy. Keeping it alive for five years is the hard bit, and that's now what the rules pay for.
Under the revised Green Credit Programme rules of August 2025, a company restoring degraded forest land earns credits only after five years, only if canopy density hits 40%, and at one credit per surviving tree[1]. The company has to raise and look after the plantation itself[1]. About 22,656 hectares had been picked for this work, with public-sector oil, coal and power firms the biggest participants[1].
Designated agencies verify survival and canopy before any credit is issued, and the applicant pays a verification fee[2]. So what happens if a block misses 40% in year five? It earns nothing, and most holders have no reliable yearly view of how their saplings are doing until it's too late.
First, the regulatory bit - Sprigtally does independent monitoring for the plantation holder. It is not the designated verification agency and it does not issue credits. It gives the holder early warning and a clean evidence file.
The seed wanted to tokenise carbon credits on a blockchain, and I dropped that. Green credits for tree planting are now non-tradable and cut off from carbon markets[1], and any token held by Indians would be taxed as a virtual digital asset at 30% with 1% TDS[3]. There's nothing left to tokenise. The real gap is measurement.
Here's how it works. Each year a drone flies over every block, image models count the crowns and measure canopy cover, and field crews then check sample plots on the ground. That ground step is not optional, because a 2026 study found low-cost drone methods overestimated tree metrics and needed local correction[4]. The holder gets a block-by-block map of dead patches, a replanting list and a running forecast of whether year five will clear 40%.
The company holding the blocks pays, usually through its sustainability or CSR team, since credits can count towards CSR or compensatory afforestation obligations[1]. State forest departments that do the planting are users, not buyers. Nobody publishes a price for this kind of monitoring, so my rough estimate is ₹3,000–8,000 per hectare per year, depending on terrain.
The August 2025 rules pushed credit issue from year two to year five and tied it to canopy instead of planting counts[1]. The earlier version had been criticised for rewarding dense planting with no long-term checks[5]. Drone rules were loosened in 2021[6] and tree-detection models are open source now, so the tools are cheap.
There's no public figure for spending on Green Credit monitoring. The narrow base is the land - about 22,656 hectares selected, with work started on 3,409 hectares by November 2024[1]. At my assumed price that selected area would be worth roughly ₹7–18 Cr a year if fully covered. Treat it as a ceiling to test, not a forecast.
I couldn't confirm any Indian firm selling survival audits built around this programme. Drone survey companies and forestry consultancies do plantation mapping, but as one-off jobs. The ICFRE-run programme portal tracks parcels and isn't a monitoring service for holders[7]. The gap is a yearly, standard service that a PSU can buy across states.
| Difficulty | Moderate (46/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹1.2–2.2 Cr |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The software is the easy part. The hard parts are fieldwork in remote forest blocks, drone permissions near protected or border areas, and calibrating crown counts for Indian species. Selling to PSUs means tenders, earnest-money deposits and payment cycles that can drag on for months, so working capital matters more than code.
Sprigtally needs no licence to monitor plantations, but drones and forest land bring their own permissions.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't trust drone models on their own. They overestimated tree metrics in published tests, so ground plots stay in every audit.
Want to work out the AI layer for Sprigtally? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I like this one more than the blockchain version it came from. If you have forestry or drone-survey experience and the patience for public-sector sales then it's a good fit. If you're after carbon-trading margins then look elsewhere, because this is a measurement service and nothing fancier.
Before anything else, prove that your year-one count matches a hand count on sample plots within 10%.
Plan for about ₹1.2–2.2 Cr over 6–9 months, mostly drones, pilots, field crews and the counting models.
No licence to monitor, but you need registered drones, certified pilots and forest department permission for fieldwork. You also can't call your reports official verification.
Yes, survival and canopy evidence matters to restoration projects everywhere. Check the local drone rules and what each country's credit scheme accepts as proof.
The free Sprigtally validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the drone and programme-rules checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for block holders and forest officers, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Sprigtally or something close to it? The make-or-break work is winning the first public-sector contract with counts that hold up on the ground, and that's the kind of thing I help founders with. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.