Manoj Kumar Rawat is a banking and development-finance professional with over three decades of experience across agriculture and rural finance, priority-sector lending, MSME finance, development finance and regulated financial institutions. He is the author of The Carbon Trilogy, a three-book body of work that connects carbon markets and climate finance with agriculture, rural economies, financial institutions and the emerging carbon economy.

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The Carbon Trilogy comprises Carbon Credit: A Beginner’s Guide, The Carbon Handshake: The Golden Suture, and The Carbon Economy Simplified. Written from a practitioner’s perspective, the books seek to make carbon credits, carbon markets and climate finance more accessible while examining the institutions, financing structures, market architecture and field-level systems required to translate climate outcomes into credible economic value.

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Three books. One interconnected carbon economy.

Why Carbon Matters.

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Carbon has become too important to misunderstand. As carbon markets, climate finance and climate-linked decisions increasingly enter professional practice, policy and finance, readers need to understand how the different pieces connect. The Carbon Trilogy brings those pieces together — from first understanding to real-world application.

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His perspective on the carbon economy draws from a career that began as a Scientist-Engineer with ISRO and subsequently spanned NABARD, Fullerton India, RBL Bank, regulated-NBFC leadership and IFAD. Across these roles, his work has covered P&L, credit and risk, investment credit, refinance, rural infrastructure, agricultural value chains, financial inclusion and institutional development, with career-wide exposure to approximately USD 2 billion in portfolios, financing and capital deployment across banking, agriculture, rural infrastructure and development finance.

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At RBL Bank, he served as Group EVP & Head, Agriculture & Rural Business and was a member of the Management Committee, leading a national business spanning agriculture, rural retail, MSME, value-chain and commodity finance, warehousing and priority-sector lending. Earlier, at Fullerton India, he was part of the founding leadership team for the rural and microfinance business, working across risk management, credit frameworks, product policy and portfolio governance.

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He spent more than a decade with NABARD, with experience across investment credit, refinance, rural infrastructure, irrigation and water resources, agricultural marketing, warehousing and cold chain, horticulture, post-harvest systems, financial inclusion and development programmes. His work also included NABARD Consultancy Services (NABCONS) and serving as PMU In-Charge for a KfW-assisted Indo-German watershed development programme.

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He later bootstrapped and led ValueFin, an RBI-registered NBFC, as Founder, MD & CEO, with responsibility across governance, capital, regulation, credit and operations. More recently, he worked with IFAD as Senior Consultant & Lead Technical Architect on an agri-finance facility in Africa, covering refinancing, guarantees, risk-sharing structures, governance, operating frameworks and implementation architecture.

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This combination of commercial banking, development finance and field-level rural experience informs his approach to climate finance. His work and research increasingly examine how carbon markets, smallholder finance, digital MRV, benefit-sharing systems, institutional architecture and financial settlement mechanisms can be connected more effectively — particularly in agricultural and rural economies.

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He is the Founder & CEO of Rural Rethink Advisory LLP, with areas of work spanning agriculture and rural finance, development-finance architecture, climate-aligned finance, carbon markets, institutional systems and Responsible AI for rural financial services. He also serves on the Governing Board of CLEAN Network, has advised on the Government of India’s National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) initiative, and has served as a Jury Member of the Global Climate Partnership Fund.

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Over the course of his career, he has worked with or alongside institutions including IFAD, IFC, KfW, GIZ, the World Bank, CDC, FAO and USAID, across assignments and institutional engagements involving agriculture, rural finance, financial inclusion and development finance.

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Alongside his books, his research and publications cover climate finance, carbon markets, smallholder and rural finance, agricultural finance systems, institutional architecture and sustainable development. Open-access working papers, preprints, datasets and methodology outputs are available through platforms including OSF, Zenodo, Harvard Dataverse, Figshare, SSRN, ScienceDB, ResearchGate and Academia.edu.

An alumnus of G.B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, where he was a B.Tech Gold Medallist, he also holds an M.E., MBA (Finance) and CAIIB, and is a Certified Independent Director through IICA. His executive and specialised learning includes programmes through Cornell, Wharton, Oxford Saïd and IIM Ahmedabad, together with professional learning in Artificial Intelligence through IBM.

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He has participated as a speaker and guest faculty at IIMs, IITs, banking and management institutions, training programmes, and national and international forums.

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Based in Mumbai, his work continues to explore the intersection of finance, agriculture, climate, institutions and emerging technologies — and how these can be brought together to build a more credible, inclusive and practical carbon economy.