Can a piece of farmland outside Bangalore actually earn more than a flat in the city? On a recent episode of The Founder’s Dream, host Abhishek Vyas sat down with Vishnu Viswanath, a farmland entrepreneur who runs MyFarmland.co, to talk through exactly that. The conversation moves from legal land-size rules to farm stays pulling in lakhs a month, and by the end, the MyFarmland.co business model comes across as less of a real estate gimmick and more of an answer to a genuine information gap in India’s farmland market.
What Is the MyFarmland.co Business Model?
Vishnu didn’t set out to sell land himself. He built MyFarmland.co because finding a legitimate farmland project on Google is harder than it looks. Search for “farmland” and you mostly find the handful of players who can afford heavy digital marketing — the smaller, often better, projects stay invisible.
His platform exists to close that gap. The MyFarmland.co business model is built around physical verification: his team visits each project, checks documentation, photographs the site, and only then lists it. As he put it:
“I’m collecting the right information to the customers… we will visit, we take all the photographs, all the documentation checks we will do it. We verify first. If we are happy with the project, we are uploading to our system.”
He’s upfront that the platform is still early — launched roughly four months before this recording, with around 30 builder projects onboarded and another 25 in the verification pipeline. But the logic is sound: a single broker can vouch for one or two projects at most, while a platform built on verified listings can scale trust across a hundred.
Farmland vs Flats: Which Makes More Financial Sense?
The numbers Vishnu lays out are blunt. A plot in HSR Layout, Bangalore, won’t come cheap — he pegs it at ₹20,000-25,000 per square foot, and even that may only grow to ₹1,000-2,000 more per square foot in two years. Compare that to farmland 50-70 km outside the city, priced around ₹500 per square foot, which he says can double to ₹1,000 in the same window.
The flat comparison is even sharper. A two-BHK apartment in Bangalore running close to ₹2 crore could, in his words, buy four farmland properties instead. But he’s careful not to oversell short-term farmland returns either:
“If you invest around 1 crore in the city, this benefit you will get it in next 4 year, 5 year — it is not going to be a 2x or 3x. But I’m telling, more than a benefit, there is a family gathering will happen in farmlands.”
That line captures his real pitch — it isn’t pure arbitrage, it’s lifestyle plus long-term value. For readers weighing similar property decisions, our piece on Manav Kakkar’s farmhouse story on The Founder’s Dream offers a parallel look at how another founder approached owning land outside the city.
Can Farm Stays Really Generate ₹2 Lakh a Month?
This is the headline claim of the episode, and Vishnu backs it with specifics rather than vague optimism. People are converting farmland into Airbnb-style cottages, and the spending varies wildly — some build for ₹6-10 lakh, others sink ₹1-2 crore into the structure.
The returns scale accordingly. He mentions owners earning ₹20,000 a month on smaller setups, and at the higher end:
“You won’t believe, two lakhs rental on… monthly is getting. 24 lakh rupees, almost 20-25 lakh rupees return every month… yearly they are getting. It depends on their investment.”
Demand is real too — he recounts an IT company inquiry for 35 staff wanting an exclusive 15-day stay to work remotely from a farm, which his current setup couldn’t accommodate due to internet and capacity limits. His next product, myfarmstay.co, is built specifically to let people test-stay a property before buying, and to formalize this rental layer that owners are already running informally through Airbnb and Instagram.
Readers exploring this as a side hustle rather than a passive investment might also find value in our roundup of business ideas for 2026 on The Founder’s Dream, where farm stays sit alongside other emerging opportunities.
Legal Checklist Before You Buy Farmland
Farmland doesn’t carry RERA-style approvals the way urban plots do, which is exactly where buyers get burned. Vishnu is specific about state-wise minimum land sizes that determine whether a purchase is even legal to register:
- Tamil Nadu: minimum 21 cents (roughly 9,200+ sq ft)
- Karnataka: minimum five guntas (roughly 5,500 sq ft)
- Telangana and Andhra Pradesh: 6,000+ sq ft
Buy below these thresholds and the registration itself isn’t legally valid in that state’s rulebook. When Abhishek Vyas pushed him on risk, Vishnu’s answer was direct:
“Nothing risk is there. They have to check properly legal and terms. No risk.”
His non-negotiable checklist, when pressed further, comes down to three things:
“Legal. State-wise rules. And main entry exit of their roads.”
That last point is easy to miss. He describes buyers discovering, after purchase, that the “tar road” shown during the pitch is actually 100-200 metres away from their actual plot boundary — a gap that only shows up if you physically verify, not just check paperwork. His advice: spend the ₹50,000-1 lakh on a proper advocate rather than the cheapest one available, given the scale of money already at stake.
Why Urban IT Professionals Are Shifting to Farmland
Vishnu ties the current wave of interest directly to the post-Corona work-from-home shift, which freed IT professionals from needing to live near their office. Combined with search for genuine investment options beyond SIPs, farmland started looking less like a farmer’s asset and more like a community project — his word for it is literally “community,” comparable to a 30-40 site residential layout but with 70-100 members buying quarter-acre plots together.
The buyer profile he describes is specific: not young couples, but people aged 30 to 50 who already own an apartment or villa in the city and are looking for a second asset that offers weekend recovery from a five-day work week. He’s also candid about the generational angle, noting that apartment-raised kids often react to soil with discomfort:
“If you’re staying in apartment, you don’t have a choice your kids to go to outside. Even 80% I have seen, if they touch the mud they say no dirty. Who is going to teach you mother earth all stories?”
That framing — land as a way to pass something down, not just a return on capital — runs through the whole conversation, and it’s part of why he personally recommends farmland over a flat when asked directly which one to buy.
The Bigger Picture on Risk and Scale
None of this is presented as risk-free easy money. Vishnu repeatedly flags that 80% of the market doesn’t understand what “farmland” as a project category even means, and that most transactions still happen through brokers who have no incentive to disclose the full picture. His platform’s bet is that verified information, not higher returns, is the actual product people are short of.
He also sees farmland reselling as proof of traction — citing a case where he sold a plot at ₹1,000 per square foot that later resold at ₹3,250. Whether that pattern holds at scale across hundreds of projects pan-India, which is where he says MyFarmland.co is headed next, remains to be seen. But for anyone researching farmland investment in India before putting real money down, this episode is a useful primer on what to check first.
This episode is part of the ongoing lineup on The Founder’s Dream, a business podcast India audience increasingly turns to for grounded founder conversations like this one — worth exploring if you’re building a founder podcast watchlist of your own, including the channel’s latest Hindi-language episodes.
Watch the full conversation with host Abhishek Vyas on The Founder’s Dream YouTube channel and subscribe for new founder interviews every week.
Frequently asked questions
What is the MyFarmland.co business model?
MyFarmland.co works as a verification and discovery platform that lists managed farmland projects from more than 30 builders, visits each site, checks documentation, and helps buyers compare projects instead of relying on individual brokers.
Can farm stays really generate ₹2 lakh monthly rental income?
According to Vishnu Viswanath, some farm stay owners who have invested in well-built cottages are earning around ₹2 lakh a month in rental income, though returns depend heavily on the investment size and location.
What is the minimum land size to legally buy farmland in India?
The minimum size varies by state: Tamil Nadu requires at least 21 cents, Karnataka requires five guntas, and Telangana and Andhra Pradesh require around 6,000 square feet or more.
Is farmland a better investment than a flat in Bangalore?
Vishnu Viswanath says farmland offers long-term growth and lower entry cost compared to flats, though flats may appreciate faster in the short term; he personally recommends farmland for long-term value and family use.
What should buyers check before purchasing farmland?
Buyers should verify state-wise legal land size rules, confirm the property has a proper legal road for entry and exit, and get the documentation validated by a qualified advocate before buying.
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