Unakti

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Rasayana is an ancient conscious life methodology. It’s the discipline of slowing down, extracting with intention, and preserving the full intelligence of a plant, rather than reducing it to a single function.

In every batch, the focus is not just efficacy, but coherence between plant, process and purpose.

In my latest piece published in Illuminem, I explore the structural pressures driving the accelerating loss of medicinal plant biodiversity.

What is often framed as a conservation problem is, in reality, a supply chain design problem. Global demand for botanical ingredients across cosmetics, nutraceutical, and health industries has expanded rapidly, while the governance systems capable of sustaining that demand have not evolved at the same pace.

Across several Indian bioregions where Verde Sombra Ltd is building regenerative botanical supply ecosystems Unakti, the same patterns repeatedly emerge: unpaid female labour sustaining biodiversity, fragile wild harvesting systems under increasing pressure, and development programmes designed around short funding cycles rather than long-term livelihood continuity.

The article examines why regenerative governance, farmer-owned enterprises, and compliance-ready supply architectures are becoming essential foundations for the future of botanical health industries.

To all the critical thinkers out there who can manage to focus on reading for 5 minutes

From wild extraction to living pharmacopeias | illuminem Why regenerative governance is becoming a structural requirement for botanical health industries

A luminous phenomenon, born of snow and silence.
In the ghost village of Milam — once a vital Indo-Tibetan trade hub — we are forming our first Farmers’ Collective with the Bothiya tribe.

Every year, these women hand-harvest glacial seabuckthorn under a traditional quota system. Shade-dried for 14 days, each berry carries the imprint of 6-month snowburials, glacial winds, and the resilience of wild mountain ecosystems.

During our Rasayana infusion, something happened:
The berries glowed.
Sustained, visible light — not shimmer, not reflection.

Scientists might say carotenoid crystals, thermoluminescence, or trace glacial minerals.

But we know what it was.
Prāṇa (Life-force) becoming Tejas (light-fire)
A rare transmission from plant to human.

This batch is now sealed as:
Luminous Grade | Signature Rasayana Infusion.

Only for sacred use. For light-bearing skin rituals. For remembering the intelligence of wild plants.

At Unakti, we’re not waiting for product launches or media campaigns to begin creating impact. We’ve rolled up our sleeves and gone to work, on the land, with the people, for the future.

Our high-altitude botanical garden, nestled in a forgotten ghost village in the Johar Valley, is not a PR stunt. It’s a living act of resistance. We’re regenerating a sloped, barren terrain, once abandoned, now pulsing with potential.

For six months of the year, this land will be submerged under two mt. of snow. The other six, it becomes a proving ground for the most resilient medicinal plants on Earth, plants that must fight to survive, and in doing so, develop extraordinary therapeutic actives. These are not your average herbs. These are warriors of cellular regeneration, UVB protection, and deep, systemic healing.

We’ve honored the living boundary that was already there, wild Himalayan berry bushes, and built the rest by hand using branches and stones unearthed during clearing. Not a single brick. Not a drop of cement. Just respect for the land, and the people who know how to work it.

We’ve employed 17 people directly on this mission:
2 porters brave the steep, narrow paths to bring tools and materials.
9 men have worked on boundary building, stone-lifting, slope stabilization, and site prep.
4 women are tending the soil, sowing seeds, nurturing young plants with the care only ancestral wisdom can offer.
2 women run our homestay and kitchen.

Meanwhile, at our headquarters in Goa, we’ve been busy building a mini food and medicine forest from the ground up, over 400 plants, more than 100 species, and 50+ trees.

No ads. No token campaigns. No corporate gimmicks. Regeneration First. Always.

While most brands still peddle the “buy one, we plant one” trope, weaponizing guilt to sell you something, we’ve already planted hundreds. We’ve restored a whole biome. We’ve brought a ghost village back to life. And we’ve done it without asking for anything in return. This is what a regenerative business model looks like.

We're also tackling the pay gap, rather than talking about it.
Daily wages for men have increased by 43%
Daily wages for women have increased by 67%, fully closing the gender gap.

And here’s the clincher: salary caps are fixed at 10x across the company, from grassroots workers to the founder. No more obscene 1000x executive bonuses. We just deleted two zeroes. Problem solved.

All of This, Pre-Product. Pre-Revenue. Pre-Seed.
We are not VC-backed. We are not driven by traction spreadsheets. We are building slowly, with intent, thanks to a rare kind of investor, Penny Froggatt, a true angel who didn’t ask for metrics, but saw the future through the lens of integrity: Planet - People - Profit.

So when we say we’re regenerating the Himalayas, we mean it. This is not CSR. It’s not ESG. It’s GSR -Genuine Systems Regeneration.

This is a systems-change revolution, we’re birthing a feminine economy of wellbeing.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been living in the heart of the high Himalayas, immersed in the daily rhythm of community life with the extraordinary Bodhiya tribe, from the Indo-Tibetan corridor.

In this remote mountain region, I'm witnessing the living embodiment of matriarchal power, not as dominance, but as selfless devotion.

Here, women lead with quiet strength. They rise before dawn, climb steep hillsides to cut grass for their cows, then return to milk them, churn butter, make ghee and yogurt, all by hand. They grow the food we eat, cook nourishing meals not only for their families but for neighbours and guests alike.

They spin, weave, sew, preserve their ancestral knowledge and traditions, and pass them on, not through speeches, but through action, care, and constancy.

In these women, I see the true matriarch: not sentimental, but fiercely protective. Not seeking praise, but holding it all together, soil, seed, kinship, and culture.

Each day, during our shared Shakti yoga and folk dance sessions, we laugh, we hug, we share, we rest in the warmth of belonging. The air is clean. The water flows from glaciers above. The food is real. And priorities are clear.

This is Indigenous feminine leadership in action, rooted in reciprocity, humility, and resilience. The matriarch asks not “What can I take?” but “How can I protect what protects us all?” This is not charity. It is systems-change. It is creation and care.

Matriarchy must be more than a memory. It must become an ideology, structural, political, and ecological. We need policies that nurture life, not just monetary capital. Communities built not on extraction, but on relationship.

The future doesn’t belong to those who conquer. It belongs to those who care. Patriarchy has had its time, the time of utter devastation, extraction, destruction, oppression, exploitation, violence, abuse and collapse. We know what men can do to us and to our planet.

To truly change the world, feminine free-thinkers must come together to build communities rooted in real care, softness, and courageous leadership.

We need to build a world where humans, animals, plants, and all living beings exist in true symbiosis.

It begins with the Feminine, the power of Shakti, the female force of action, birth and death, creative, protective, and deeply connected to life itself.

Spectacular remote, untouched Himalayas, where the earth meets the sky, we reach a sacred threshold of silence, power and awe.
Far from noise and grasp, we step into a realm of stillness and vastness where the breath slows, the mind clears, and the soul remembers.

Each spring, as the snow melts from the high ridges of the Himalayas, a short-lived yet perilous ritual unfolds. For just 3–4 weeks in May, small groups of foragers, men, women, often entire families, set out above 4,500 metres to extremelly challenging hikes, in search of one of the rarest biological marvels on Earth: Yarsagumba (Ophiocordyceps sinensis), also called the Himalayan caterpillar fungus.

This isn’t just a rare herb, it’s an extraordinary fusion of fungus and insect. A parasitic fungus infects a moth larva underground, mummifies it, then sprouts a slender stalk through the frozen soil.

That delicate brown stem is what hundreds of people risk their lives to find. Thin air, frostbite, deadly falls, avalanches, landslides; these are daily realities for the collectors crawling through alpine meadows to spot a single thread-like growth no longer than a toothpick.

Why such danger? Because Yarsagumba fetches up to €37,000 per kilo in markets like Singapore and Hong Kong. And not without reason. Revered in Traditional Chinese Medicine as a tonic of vital essence and longevity, it has resisted laboratory replication. Its chemical complexity remains unmatched, and science is only just catching up.

Modern research shows Yarsagumba enhances mitochondrial function, increases ATP production, and supports oxygen uptake, offering cellular-level energy and endurance.

For the skin, it’s one of nature’s most potent regenerators: it stimulates repair, shields from oxidative stress, supports collagen integrity, and helps skin adapt and renew under environmental pressure.

It’s not just skincare, it’s cell care.

During our recent R&D expedition across the Himalayan belt, I met several Yarsagumba collectors making their descent, exhausted, sunburned, but carrying the final harvest of the season.

We’re now beginning to collaborate with some of them, not as extractors of rare fungi, but as high-altitude seedling collectors for Unakti’s regenerative nurseries.

Together, we’re helping preserve other endangered alpine botanicals with equal therapeutic potential, without removing them from their ecosystems. This is how we honour the knowledge, courage, and ecological intimacy of these communities.

Yarsagumba reminds us that regeneration often begins where life is hardest, and where those closest to the land still know how to listen.

These two brothers-collectors Ramesh and Mayank, are now part of our Unakti high-altitude Himalayan team, working on phase 2 land prep and seedlings collection for our first botanical nursery that will help on the preservation of some of the extremely powerful, rare an endangered species found at 4000/ 5000 mt above sea-level.

We honour and celebrate these brave, resilient mountain men, embodying a primal masculine force rooted in protection, endurance, and harmony with the wild. They remind us of a hands-on true masculinity that safeguards, rather than dominates.

In the Johar Valley of the Indian Himalayas, at 3,240 meters above sea level, Unakti is working on the ground to restore what’s disappearing: biodiversity, traditional knowledge, and the livelihoods of mountain communities.

The Himalayan region plays a critical role in regulating global climate systems and is home to rare, high-value medicinal plants used in Ayurveda and Tibetan medicine for millenia.

But the ecosystem is under serious threat. Climate change, over harvesting, irresponsible and unsustainable development and land abandonment have made this one of the most vulnerable bioregions on the planet.

At the same time, Indigenous knowledge especially around cultivation, wildcrafting, and ecological balance, is rapidly being lost as younger generations are forced to migrate. Entire villages have emptied. Plants once used in everyday healing are now classified as endangered. What we’re facing is not just environmental degradation, it’s the breakdown of an entire biocultural system.

Unakti chose the Himalayas because the intersection of ecological fragility and cultural erosion demands a regenerative response.

We’re establishing the first Unakti Regenerative Botanical Garden in Tola village, focused on reintroducing native species like Kutki, Lal Jari, and Chippi through shaded terrace cultivation. We are working directly with Indigenous women farmers to grow in ways that respect both the ecology and the deep knowledge systems of the region.

This is our holistic approach to business, because we understand there are no real boundaries between business and nature, between profit and purpose, between human and ecosystem. The most powerful solutions emerge when we stop acting as if we’re separate from the systems we’re trying to heal.

Our success as a company isn’t independent of planetary health. Nature isn’t a machine to be fixed, it’s an intelligent, life-giving partner waiting to co-create with us.

This isn’t a one-off initiative. It’s a long-term, community-led strategy to regenerate degraded land, create dignified livelihoods, and build a decentralized supply ecosystem rooted in biodiversity, not monoculture.

We’re not here to scale quickly but to restore deeply.