Tata Capital, the financial services arm of the Tata Group, is helping rural communities hold on to every drop of water through its flagship watershed development programme, JalAadhar. The initiative works in some of India’s most drought-prone belts in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu, where farm incomes depend heavily on the monsoon. In the year ended March 31, 2025, JalAadhar reached more than 2.4 lakh people in over 200 villages and created 25,274 lakh litres of new water harvesting capacity.
The company says JalAadhar is built around capturing rainwater run-off, recharge groundwater, and use water wisely in fields. The programme also links water security to better farm practices and local livelihood options.The programme now spans 330+ villages, has treated 790 water bodies, and built a cumulative 4,500 million litres of storage. Average groundwater levels are up 5.5 meters, 3,000 acres are under micro-irrigation, and farmers are reporting average income gains of about ₹30,000 a year thanks to more reliable water.
A year earlier, JalAadhar had covered 124 villages and 2+ lakh people, creating 1050 million litres of harvesting capacity across the same three states-showing how quickly the programme has scaled. JalAadhar was designed to support community-owned solutions that sit alongside government watershed and groundwater recharge schemes and advance UN Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation.