Aditya Agarwalla

He studied as an undergraduate at Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry, majoring in computer science; a 2017 article in Entrepreneur India magazine gives his subject at Princeton as computer engineering.⁠[1][2][3]

Over Thanksgiving break in 2014 he came home to New Delhi from Princeton, and he and his father, Sanjay Agarwalla, struck up a conversation about the endemic problems of rural India. YourStory writes that he was home in Delhi-NCR on a school break when he had a long conversation with his father about the difficulties Indian farmers have in selling their crops; Entrepreneur India writes that during a vacation his father recounted this story to him, with its compounding disadvantage to farmers in India, and that he then used his vacations to research the issue and eventually identified the problems at the grassroots.⁠[4][2][3]

Father and son then traveled around the country themselves to talk to farmers about the problems they faced. He said: “The problem was a lack of awareness.”⁠[4]

In the spring 2015 semester he completed an independent work report in Princeton University’s Department of Computer Science, “Kisan Network (Hindi for ‘Farmer Network’),” advised by Robert Dondero. The report argues that stakeholders in India’s agricultural ecosystem lack awareness of resources beyond their immediate local community, that farmers depend solely on people they know in their village, are deprived of fair prices for their crops and have poor access to labor and to other agricultural resources such as equipment and transport, and that the spread of inexpensive Android smartphones and 2G/3G data services has made it possible to get information at low cost.⁠[5]

The Kisan Network described in the report was an Android-only application, in English and Hindi, that connected farmers, buyers and middlemen, labor contractors, equipment providers and transport providers so that they could buy, sell and rent produce and resources; its back end ran on Google App Engine with Cloud Endpoints and a Google Cloud SQL (MySQL) database. During that semester the crop-sale feature was implemented, while the labor-request feature was still in progress.⁠[5]

For the report he and his father carried out a focus study in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh in December 2014–January 2015 with about 35–40 people (four farmer groups, six middlemen and labor contractors, and four transport providers), and in March 2015, over spring break, he and his father had 18–20 farmers in four villages in western Uttar Pradesh evaluate a minimum viable product; the report planned a pilot of the crop-transaction and labor-request features in Uttar Pradesh from July 2015. In the acknowledgements he thanks his parents for advising him at every step as he approached the problem.⁠[5]

He later recalled: “Kisan Network started as my undergrad thesis work at Princeton University.” YourStory describes it as a computer science undergraduate thesis project done in his Princeton dorm room and writes that in his third year he realized the problem was bigger than he had expected.⁠[6][2]

National Geographic writes that after talking the problem over, father and son decided in late 2015 to form an online marketplace, Kisan Network, bringing India’s traditional mandi (produce market) to the phone so that farmers could reach buyers beyond their local market; YourStory likewise writes that in 2015 he decided to turn Kisan Network into a startup with his father. Entrepreneur and Business InsiderBusiness InsiderBusiness Insider is a digital business-news organization.Open the full entry India in 2020, and Y Combinator’s company page, give 2016 as the year the company was founded.⁠[1][2][7][8][9]

He left Princeton University for the company. TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry writes that he dropped out of Princeton to build the business, and National Geographic that he dropped out in his junior year to work on Kisan Network full-time; Entrepreneur India writes that within a few months he came back to India, taking a break from his university education. In 2017 he said that the break was at first meant to last a year: “Initially it was for a year, but as the company is growing fast I haven’t had the time to go back yet.”⁠[4][1][3]

Kisan Network was in Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 batch; National Geographic writes that an initial pilot phase led to backing from the CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry-based accelerator. His founder profile on Y Combinator’s site describes a decade of experience in building companies, teams and products from scratch, calls him one of the first India- and Asia-focused founders backed by both Y Combinator and Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry, at the age of 22, and lists media that have covered him, including TechCrunch, ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry, Business Insider and the Economic Times.⁠[9][1]

On March 9, 2016, TechCrunch published an article by Jonathan Shieber on Kisan Network, describing the company as the culmination of two years that 51-year-old Sanjay Agarwalla and his 22-year-old son Aditya had spent thinking about the problems farmers in rural India face in selling their goods, with a pilot program starting with potatoes.⁠[4]

The article describes how it worked: farmers could upload and advertise their crops on Kisan Network for free; the company had local ambassadors at the village level who worked with farmers to determine when they planned to harvest; once it had matched a farmer with a buyer it instructed the farmer to harvest, then sorted, graded, processed and shipped the produce to the buyer, taking a cut of no larger than 8% of each transaction. The company employed a sales team of ten to cultivate both buyers and sellers.⁠[4]

Sanjay Agarwalla said that the transparent cut taken by middlemen is 11%, and that with taxes and labor charges it can be more; the farmer Narendra Partidar said that the platform helped him get better prices for his crops than other local buyers and mandi rates and saved him transport costs.⁠[4]

The Thiel Foundation announced the 29 Thiel Fellows of 2016 on June 21, 2016, chosen from more than 6,000 applications from around the world, each receiving $100,000 “to learn by doing rather than by following conventional paths like college.” He is the first name on the list, as “Aditya Agarwalla (New Delhi, India),” with the project Kisan Network in the category Agriculture Marketplace; the announcement describes him as co-founder of Kisan Network, an online marketplace for the $200 billion Indian agricultural ecosystem through which farmers use a smartphone to sell produce directly to institutional buyers, bypassing the middlemen who dominate physical markets.⁠[10]

National Geographic writes that more funding came when he was awarded the $100,000 Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry; Business Insider India wrote in 2020 that he started Kisan Network with $100,000 awarded by the Thiel Foundation in 2016.⁠[1][8]

An article by Sugandh Singh in Entrepreneur India magazine (May 2017 issue, posted online on June 1, 2017) describes Kisan Network as working with local service providers in each region and managing the whole chain of procurement, packaging, transport and sale to business buyers such as restaurants, large retailers and FMCG companies, using data to estimate demand and suitable prices.⁠[3]

He explained that farmers who have already taken their crops to a mandi cannot take them back to look for a better price and so often sell at mandi rates, and said: “We definitely provide better prices to farmers and procure from them directly.” The article notes that Kisan Network pays electronically and in full, whereas some middlemen pay farmers in installments, sometimes over several years.⁠[3]

On February 3, 2018, National Geographic published Christina Nunez’s article “With Kisan Network, a Father and Son Aim to Connect Farmers Through Phones,” which writes that Kisan Network charged 5 to 15 percent of each sale, had grown from 10 to more than 30 staff, was working in Uttar Pradesh and other states, and planned to expand from its five locations to a few hundred within the next two years.⁠[1]

He said: “Even with low-margin crops like potatoes, we have been able to offer 10 percent more than prevalent market rates.” Of working with his father he said that family businesses are common in India but theirs is a little different: “Normally the younger generation takes up a business that has been running for a long time,” and “We were starting off together at the same time with something new.” He also said that “All of our engineers are from urban backgrounds,” which made building products for rural farmers harder.⁠[1]

In January 2020 Kisan Network announced a $3 million round (₹21.4 crore in Business Insider India’s conversion) led by Atsushi Taira of Mistletoe, with Y Combinator, the Thiel Foundation, Venture Highway, FundersClub, Lynett Capital, Gokul RajaramGokul RajaramGokul Rajaram is a Silicon Valley product leader and investor who helped build Google AdSense early in his career, went on to serve as an executive at Facebook, Square (Block), and DoorDash, and sits on the boards of public companies including Coinbase and Pinterest; in 2024 he co-founded the investment firm Marathon Management Partners with a partner.Open the full entry and other angel investors participating. AgFunderNews wrote on January 29, 2020, that the company had raised a seed round earlier, so this was likely a Series A; Business Insider India called the money a “seed fund.”⁠[6][7][2][8]

The company stated at the time that Kisan Network was headquartered in Gurugram, Haryana, had a team of 70, served more than 55,000 farmers in more than 6,000 villages in states including Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and the northeastern states, had moved produce more than 275,000 km over 65 routes, and sourced all of its procurement directly from farmers; Entrepreneur gives more than 55,000 farms. His own figures were more than 50,000 farmers in more than 6,000 villages.⁠[11][7][6]

The company said that Kisan Network gave farmers market prices, crop quality reports and transport rates, linked buyers, transporters and packaging partners on one platform, recorded and monitored every step digitally without paper, and paid farmers digitally and on time; it also used computer vision to assess crop quality remotely. The new funds were to go into new regions and crops and into new products and services for farmers.⁠[7][11]

A Medium post that he wrote with his father states: “Farmers could not care less about how much we have raised, who we have raised from,” and “While raising money is sometimes mistaken for success, we realize the fallacy in doing so”; Entrepreneur quotes the second sentence as his. In the company’s announcement he said: “We have come a long way, but still have an even longer way to go.” The lead investor, Atsushi Taira, said: “We see immense value in Kisan Network’s focus in providing market linkages directly to farmers.”⁠[6][7][11][8]

When read on November 12, 2026, Y Combinator’s company page listed Kisan Network’s status as “Inactive,” its founding year as 2016, its team size as 75 and its location as “Gurugram, India,” and named its founders as Aditya Agarwalla (Founder/CEO) and Sanjay Kumar Agarwalla (Founder).⁠[9]

His father, Sanjay K. Agarwalla (Sanjay Kumar Agarwalla), is a co-founder of Kisan Network; National Geographic describes father and son as based in New Delhi. His father has been an entrepreneur in India for nearly three decades: in 1992 he founded Integrated Digital Systems (IDS), a geospatial analytics company, pioneered the use of GIS for yield and drainage management in tea plantations, helped FMCG and telecom companies cover rural markets, and worked on AusAID and USAID development projects, including an Agriculture Information System for Afghanistan for USAID.⁠[2][6][1][9]

Accounts of his father’s career differ in emphasis: TechCrunch calls him a distributor for major Western brands that wanted to expand into rural India; National Geographic writes that the idea for Kisan Network came to him while he was consulting with telecom and consumer goods companies looking to expand into rural India, when no one was thinking about how to help farmers increase their incomes, and that little had changed since he was a student decades earlier learning about Indian farmers’ lack of access to buyers; he said: “Thirty years back and into the future, the same problem still persists.” Entrepreneur India writes that he spent close to 15 years helping big firms get access to rural markets. His profile on Y Combinator’s site says that he started off in the early 1990s and built a profitable company, Integrated Digital Systems, whose applications included GIS, military intelligence and water supply projects, and that he is currently a co-founder of Mera Gaon.⁠[4][1][3][9]

Kisan Network: Official website: https://kisannetwork.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[13]