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Karuna Connect is a quarterly newsletter from the India Karuna Collaborative (IKC), an initiative of India Animal Fund. IKC is a collective of 55+ organisations and 100+ influential leaders to raise awareness on farmed animal welfare, leading to solutions in supply chains, and nudging shifts in sustainable nutrition – to enable better climate and public health outcomes. 
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Voices for Karuna
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Hear from IKC advisor, Ravi Venkatesan, Founder – GAME, Chairman of the Board – GEAPP on why he joined the Collaborative.

"I've found that they (animals) are just like us. They have souls, they have different abilities, and they feel all the same emotions that we humans feel—joy, pain, and suffering."
— Ravi Venkatesan
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Policy Watch

PFA PPF secured a significant policy win. On 24 June 2026, the Ministry of Tourism's Secretary issued a formal advisory directing State Governments to enforce animal welfare standards at tourist and pilgrimage destinations nationwide. The advisory was a result of their sustained engagement with government stakeholders, and addresses long-standing concerns about the treatment of working animals on pilgrimage routes. 
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Business As Usual Is Changing 

PBFIA (Plant Based Foods Industry Association) has been invited to join a 13-member core committee formed by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) — alongside HUL, Nestlé, Tata, Marico, and Zydus Godrej — to shape the sector's credibility and growth narrative. A plant-based industry body now sits at the same table as India's largest food conglomerates! 

PBFIA and BigBasket ran an exclusive back-to-school campaign (1–7 July) offering deals on plant-based staples for breakfast, lunchbox, and everyday meals — a concrete, low-friction example of how retail can nudge consumer habit shifts at scale.

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Food As Medicine 

A new clinical publication, A Physician's Guide to Therapeutic Nutrition Prescription, makes the case for food as frontline medicine. It provides medical guidance to physicians through plant-forward nutrition protocols to prevent and manage India's largest lifestyle-disease burden: diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. 
Read the Guide
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Stories From the Field

When the Punjab floods of September 2025 — the worst since 1988 — displaced over 3 lakh people, Humane World for Animals India reached more than 25,000 animals across five flood-hit districts with emergency feed, veterinary care, and supplies. The Indian Red Cross Society (Punjab State Branch) has since recognised their response. 


Read the full story →


Karuna Knowledge Hub Trumps ChatGPT Searches!

The Karuna Knowledge Hub is a searchable, plain-language system giving the movement's collective research and reports a single point of access, organised across six themes.  


What it does:

  • Ask any question in simple language  

  • Receive a response without hallucination, traced back to the exact source file 

  • Seek more clarification, or sharpen keywords to find related resources  

  • Incorporate into any projects with the confidence that the retrieved responses are from trusted sources


Explore it here →
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Events Roundup

IMA CEO Strategy Roundtable | Jodhpur

At IMA India’s CEO Strategy Roundtable on 18 July, Parag Agarwal, Co-founder of India Animal Fund, led a session on “Beyond ESG: Building Compassion into Business Design.” Addressing a room of CEOs and senior leaders from sectors including business, finance, law, media and more, he spoke about how 1.5 billion farmed animals are used as commodities in efficiency-driven supply chains, and why this invisible cruelty has serious ethical, public health, and environmental consequences for India.

Smart Protein Incubator

India Animal Fund and Japanese deep tech VC firm Beyond Next Ventures are scoping out the set up of a Smart Protein Incubator. The problem statement – removing one billion lives from the food chain. As part of this exploration, we co-hosted a DeepTech Open Mic: Protein Edition spotlighting five early-stage founders building in alternative proteins and biomanufacturing.

Vegan India Conference 2026 | Mumbai 

The Vegan India Conference marked its 5th edition with 1,000+ attendees and 65 speakers from 10+ countries — its biggest yet.  


  • A session titled, "Embedding Food Systems into ESG and Sustainability Roadmaps" featured panelists from Tata Consumer, Sodexo, and Asia Research and Engagement (ARE) as part of the Business Conclave. This session touched upon how food systems are still underrated within ESG strategies and that food should not be viewed as just another sustainability initiative. 

  • Gauri Maulekhi, Founder/ Trustee PFA PPF ran a session on "Community Dog Welfare" and participated in a speed mentoring session on public policy.
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What We Are Reading and Watching

IAF supported Test Subject V, a hybrid documentary-drama that follows one man’s personal journey as he questions long-held beliefs about food, health, and compassion. Some experiments change the way you think — and this one may just change the way you live. The film is now streaming on JioHotstar. 


Down to Earth — The Hidden Bill of Cheap Meat: an investigation into how supply chain cruelty in intensive farming functions as an economic risk, not just an ethical one — essential reading for anyone in ESG, procurement, or food systems. Read the investigation →


Peepal Farm's new children's book follows a young boy's journey into animal rescue. Now available in English, Hindi, and Marathi— because these conversations belong in every home, in every tongue. 
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Stay Updated 
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