World Elephant Day | Pradip Shah's Grow-Trees is reviving a Jharkhand elephant corridor destroyed by mining

Pradip Shah, through his company Grow-Trees, has so far planted 9,018,092 trees across 23 Indian states.

When Pradip Pannalal Shah slips into his pin-striped suit, he establishes companies and creates wealth; when he wears T-shirts and laces up his sneakers for walks in Mumbai’s Priyadarshini Park, he gently drops seeds or tucks them into the wet soil hoping that someday the seed will become a large tree where birds will nest, and fruits will bend the branches.

Wait! Do not start counting the number of seeds Pradip Shah has sowed and the saplings he has planted. You can’t. You’d run out of breath. Through his company Grow-Trees, Shah has so far planted 9 million trees across 23 Indian states: 9,018,092 trees, to be precise.

Read more: Veterans Unpacked | Pradip Shah: 'Create the right culture in an organization - for competence, integrity, cooperation, and empathy and respect amongst team members'

You must have seen Pradip Shah’s name gilded in corporate dossiers - he helped establish HDFC Corp; co-founded Crisil, India’s first credit-rating agency; and started Indocean, the first foreign, India-dedicated private equity fund, in association with Soros Fund Management and Chase Capital Partners.

These days, however, this Harvard Business School alumnus is not only crunching big numbers - he is planting trees tirelessly. Trees for Tigers. Trees for Giant Squirrels. Trees for Migratory Birds. Trees for Water. Trees for the Himalayas. Trees for Cities. And, of course, Trees for Elephants.

The Trees for Elephants project was started in response to the decreasing population of elephants in Jharkhand’s Singhbhum forests. In the West Singhbhum district, the loss of over 8,000 hectares of forest due to incessant mining led to habitat fragmentation and rising man-animal conflicts. This is when Shah stepped in. After diligent research, he initiated the plantation of local trees in the Singhbhum Elephant Reserve in Laylam village which is a corridor for the elephants who migrate annually from Odisha to West Bengal, crossing the Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary in Jharkhand.

A total of 1.3 lakh saplings were planted in the Singhbum district in 2018-19 to expand forest corridors and restore elephant migration routes. Grow-Trees set out with the target of planting 750,000 trees for the elephant corridor out of which 740,696 have already been planted.

The trees planted in Laylam are carefully selected after regular interactions with rural communities, village institutions, and the forest department. The planting of Tendu, Jackfruit, Bamboo, Acacia, Mango, Shisham, Babool, Jamun, Karanj, and Guava will create a more suitable habitat with improved food sources for elephants, and help the natural regeneration of forests.

The Trees for Elephant project region is inhabited by a variety of tribal communities who participated in the process. Around 61,875 workday jobs were created, and indirect employment and extra revenue is being generated from flowers, fruit, fodder, and fuel. Planting trees will also protect the watershed, improve groundwater table, reduce the impact of soil erosion, and when mature, the trees will absorb about 15,000 tonnes of carbon every year.

Trees for Elephants, however, is not the only tree-driven project by Shah. Under its Trees for Forest & Wildlife theme, Grow-Trees has various projects: 550,000 Trees for Tigers (Sunderbans National Park, West Bengal); 25,000 Trees for Hanguls (Dachigam National Park, Kashmir); 50,000 Trees for Tigers (Panna Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh); 120,000 Trees for Sloth Bears (Kumbhalgarh Sanctuary, Rajasthan); 93,000 Trees for Indian Giant Flying Squirrels (Sitamata Wildlife Sanctuary, Rajasthan); 15,000 Trees for Migratory Birds (Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh); 40,000 Trees for Himalayan Black Bear (Fambong Lho Wildlife Sanctuary, Sikkim); 17,500 Trees for Slender Lorises (Dindigul, Tamil Nadu); 25,000 Trees for Sun Bear (West Siang, Arunachal Pradesh), among several others.

So far, Grow-Trees has planted 9,018,092 trees that absorb 180,361,840 kg of Co2 every year. With 57 completed and 37 ongoing projects across 23 Indian states, the company has generated 743,993 employment days.

Shah talks of trees with reverence and zeal as one would of a sacred duty. He did not quote Nobel Laureate Hermann Hesse but Shah’s tree-planting idea echoes Hesse's, who said: For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits…but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree….” 

Imagine 9,018,092 trees. 9,018,092 beautiful, strong trees making the world a better place. For everyone.

A Grow-Trees sapling nursery for Jharkhand’s Trees for Elephant project.

How to get involved

Through www.grow-trees.com, you can plant trees on public/community land. Choose your occasion: Celebrate, Condole, Offset. Choose a project of your choice (listed on the website), choose the number of trees, pay (Rs 150/tree) and the recipient will receive an eTree Certificate.

Greet with a Tree: Greet with Trees® on a monthly basis, at Rs 85 per tree for 12 months.

Create a grove: Several participants can celebrate one event common to all (a wedding; an anniversary; the birth of a child; a house warming; a graduation, etc.) by individually planting one or more trees and collectively dedicating a ‘Grove’ of trees, with the recipient getting One eTreeCertificate™.

TreeBank: You can open your TreeBank and create a lifetime tree account.

CSR: Under its Plant Monthly, Greet Anytime! plan, corporates can motivate employees to plant one or more trees every month at Rs 85 per tree which will automatically be stored in their TreeBank™ account.