Balakrishnan S, a social impact leader with over two decades of dedicated work, stands as a quiet force behind India’s evolving landscape of inclusive development.
As a long-time member of the Catalyst Group and former CEO of Vrutti Livelihood Impact Partners, he has built livelihoods that centre dignity and resilience over dependence.
His celebrated ‘3Fold Model’ now adopted across multiple Indian states helps small producers transcend subsistence through financial access, market integration, and collective empowerment.
“Livelihoods cannot be delivered; they must be nurtured with dignity,” he often says a line that reflects not just his work, but his worldview.
From farmers in Karnataka and Telangana to women entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu, his work continues to transform individual aspirations into systems-based change.
Seeds of Change: A Journey from Field to Framework
Balakrishnan’s story begins not in office spaces but in India’s small village clusters. Armed with a background in management and an instinct for understanding people, he joined Catalyst Management Services (CMS) in the early 2000s an institution designed to bridge professional management and grassroots realities.
His early years were filled with field immersion learning from farmers struggling with market volatility, artisans navigating diminishing margins, and women organising cooperatives against debt pressure.
“I realised early that communities hold the blueprint for their own transformation,” he recalls from his numerous field engagements. “Our role is not to prescribe from a distance, but to listen, enable, and collaborate.”
These formative experiences in southern India shaped his belief that development models must build agency before assets. From there, Balakrishnan moved to Vrutti part of the Catalyst Group to experiment with institutional models capable of addressing systemic fragility in livelihoods.
Building the 3Fold Vision: Wealth, Resilience, and Responsibility
Vrutti, co-founded by graduates of the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), was established in 2002 as a centre for sustainable livelihoods.
Under Balakrishnan’s stewardship, Vrutti designed the “3Fold” model a framework envisioning wealthy, resilient, and responsible smallholder farmers.
Each of its regional clusters, known as Business Acceleration Units (BAUs), acts as a bridge between local producers and modern economic systems.
With the support of partners like Mindtree’s iGotCrops platform and the Small Farmers Agri-business Consortium (SFAC), the model integrates capacity building with financial access and data-driven market intelligence.
Each BAU works with approximately 7,500 farmer families and attracts cumulative investments exceeding ₹7 crore, providing access to inputs, analytics, and responsible financing.
“Our ambition isn’t charity; it’s equity through enterprise,” Balakrishnan affirms. His leadership catalysed Vrutti’s ability to turn institutional collaboration into local prosperity recording marked increases in farm incomes and resilience to climate-linked risks.
Leading Collective Growth Through Catalyst Group
Within the broader Catalyst Group, Balakrishnan is recognised as both strategist and integrator. The Group operates as a network of social enterprises including CMS, Swasti Health Catalyst, Fuzhio, and the Green Foundation each addressing health, livelihoods, and sustainability in an interconnected framework.
Together, they have touched over two million lives across 10 states, linking community prosperity with systemic reform.
The Group’s milestone Catalyst Livelihood Venture (CLV) initiative, for instance, facilitated business worth over ₹100 crore through agri-sales and capital access between 2022 and 2025, creating new revenue pathways for more than 45,000 farmers.
Balakrishnan’s leadership style collaborative, design-oriented, and deeply empirical focuses on what he calls “ecosystem orchestration.” He emphasises partnerships among NGOs, government, and industry to ensure development that outlives single projects.
“Institutions must evolve faster than markets,” he notes, “if they want to remain relevant to people’s changing realities”.
Beyond Farming: Dignity as the Core Metric
While livelihoods remain the foundation of Balakrishnan’s work, he has consistently extended the boundaries of what social business can achieve. His involvement in establishing Swati Jyothi a cooperative for women in vulnerable occupations demonstrates this intention.
The cooperative offers financial inclusion services and helps women access alternative sources of income without exploitation. Parallel initiatives in renewable agriculture and youth employment continue to expand his impact footprint, highlighting that sustainability is not a technical agenda, but a social one.
The Vrutti Annual Report 2025 outlines an increased focus on climate-smart enterprises programmes enabling small producers to embrace regenerative agriculture practices and diversify into cultural and non-farm sectors.
Each programme, Balakrishnan insists, must “begin with trust and end with dignity.” His conviction has redefined not only how India measures rural prosperity but also how economic inclusion is scaled ethically.
Reimagining the Next Decade: Collaboration, Climate, and Change
Balakrishnan’s current focus extends to reconfiguring rural entrepreneurship in the era of climate uncertainty. He engages policymakers in scaling livelihoods through data-driven, low-carbon pathways and advocates for joint farmer ownership in carbon credit frameworks.
As Head of Strategic Initiatives at Samunnati, he now designs financial products for inclusive growth and market access, continuing to champion systems thinking for social equity.
His long association with organisations like CMS and Vrutti has established him as a bridge between practitioners, policymakers, and private institutions.
Yet, his philosophy remains grounded: “Sustainability cannot be imported it must be cultivated within communities,” he often reflects. His modest tone belies the scale of his influence on social entrepreneurship in India, where he is frequently cited in panels on responsible markets and circular economies.
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
Few development leaders embody humility and institutional rigour as seamlessly as Balakrishnan S. His journey grounded in partnership, patience, and purpose offers a compelling template for inclusive progress. The Logical Indian views his work as a reminder that real impact begins where empathy meets enterprise.
In a time when rural India stands at the crossroads of climate, technology, and social change, Balakrishnan’s life story invites reflection on how progress must be measured not by the wealth we accumulate, but by the dignity we enable. As India advances toward a just economy, can more changemakers blend social conscience with systemic design to ensure communities thrive, not merely survive?.
