Shashank Kumar graduated from IIT Delhi in 2008 and worked at a consulting firm for about three years. His immediate family did not farm, so he came to agriculture from outside it.
In 2012 he co-founded DeHaat with Shyam Sundar Singh, Amrendra Singh, Adarsh Srivastava and Abhishek Dokania. The company sells farm inputs and buys produce, serving smallholder farmers.
DeHaat reported revenue of about Rs 2,700 crore in FY24, with a net loss of Rs 1,133.1 crore driven largely by a non-cash fair-value adjustment. Kumar put FY25 revenue at about Rs 3,000 crore.
DeHaat reported an EBITDA profit of Rs 5 crore to Rs 10 crore in the first quarter of FY26. The company is working toward full-year profitability.