Mumbai businessman donates over 1 lakh saplings every year

Extending a help hand to nature, Mumbai-based businessman Dilip Shah has been donating over 1 lakh saplings every year for more than a decade.

Shah, who was earlier into commercial tree plantation business in the late 90s, started to voluntarily donating saplings and gradually later made it a practice.

"The 1999 recession in realty market led me shift into the rural market and I chose to become a commercial planter and I started undertaking tree plantation contracts all over India," Shah said, who owns company Kutch Agro which is into agriculture food processing and plantation contracts.

He said in the first year, he donated a few thousand left over saplings to local villagers and farmhouse owners, which later became his passion as he saw the saplings growing into beautiful trees.

Shah said he has been donating over 1 lakh saplings every year for the last 16 years and it has now become a sacrosanct for him. He has also been planting saplings of fruit trees in a Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) garden in Matunga here and has been allotted a space by the civic body.

"I was informed that birds in want of proper food and habitation, are disappearing from the city. So, I decided to distribute 70,000 to 75,000 saplings of fruit trees and started planting at BMC Garden on Telang Road, Matunga," he said.

"BMC's garden department has also shown interest to plant the fruit trees in various municipal gardens of Mumbai," he added.