the honest answerWhy this exists

When you give,
where does it actually go?

You pay to do some good — plant a tree, feed a child, clean a river. And then… nothing. No photo. No proof. You never learn whether it worked, whether the tree lived, or whether your money quietly vanished into an office somewhere. PlantTree exists to end that silence.

scroll to see where it really goes

Before the money · why a farmer at all

You have the will. They have the hands.

You'd plant it yourself if you could — but your days are full, and the land that needs trees is six hundred kilometres away, terraced into a hillside you'll never stand on. A farmer there has the opposite problem: the time, the skill, and the soil — and too few reasons to stay.

You · the city
Days that are
already full
timenone
meansyes
Them · the hills
Time, skill,
and soil
timeall day
meansneeds it
⇄ you trade what each of you has

This isn't charity with extra steps. It's a fair division of labour.


The feeling we all know

Most giving is an act of faith.

?
Did a tree actually get planted?
Is it still alive — or already dead?
Did my money reach the ground, or an office?

Your money goes over a wall you can't see past. Maybe something good happens on the other side. Maybe it doesn't. Either way, you're rarely shown. This isn't villainy — good charities do real, hard work — it's just distance. Distance between your hands and the soil.

The whole idea, in one move

So we took the wall down.

No box, no black hole, no "trust us." Everything past this point — where your money goes, who plants the tree, whether it lives — you get to watch with your own eyes.


Step one · the money

Your money goes straight to a farmer.

You
Your bank
HDFC / SBI / etc.
Direct
Farmer's bank
SBI / coop bank
straight over UPI · NPCI rails
100% of your money reaches the farmer.
We never touch it.

No escrow. No platform fee. No account that could even hold a donation if it tried. Your bank to the farmer's bank, over UPI — we're not standing in the path, taking a cut or adding a delay.


The other end of the line
UPI · credited+ ₹1,500
sunita.devi@oksbi
planting + 1 full year of care
Sunita
Sunita Devi
Dhauladevi, Almora
the farmer's side

For Sunita-ji, this is a reason to stay.

The same payment that plants your tree pays her to plant it — and to tend it through its first year. In the hills that matters more than it sounds: every year, people leave these villages for city work because the mountain doesn't pay. A tree that pays is a small argument for staying — and the people who stay are the ones who keep the springs and the soil alive.


Step two · the proof

Then you watch it grow.

Not a stock photo. Your tree, photographed by the farmer who tends it — scroll, and watch a year pass.

Tree #PT-014 · day 0
just paid
Banj oak
Tended by Sunita-ji, Almora
survived year
Day 0

You pay your farmer directly over UPI. A private thread opens between just the two of you, and your tree gets a number.

Within 7 days

A photo lands: your sapling in the ground, a wooden tag with your tree's number staked beside it. Proof, not a promise.

Every couple of months

New photos keep coming — through its first dry season, its first new leaf, its first metre of height. On a page that is yours.

Year one

Milestones tick by: survived the dry season, first acorn drop. If it ever dies, we mark it on your page — we never quietly hide it.

For twenty years

It stops being a donation and becomes a tree you know by name — rooted, shading soil that needed it, still on a link that's yours forever.

You'll never have to wonder again.

One farmer. One tree. One photo within a week, and twenty years of proof after it. That's the whole promise — and you can hold us to every word of it.