TEAL: Kshitij Batra on Revolutionizing India's Land Records and Property Litigation

India has a land litigation problem of staggering proportions. Two-thirds of all civil cases in the country are land and property disputes, taking an average of 20 years to resolve. This backlog not only clogs the judicial system but also creates massive economic consequences: households store 77% of their wealth in property assets, yet India's mortgage-to-GDP ratio is just 10% (compared to 40%+ in developed economies). The root cause? Misinformation, lack of credible data, and a complex land governance structure that hasn't meaningfully evolved since the time of Todar Mal. Enter Kshitij Batra, CEO and Co-Founder of TEAL (Terra Economics and Analytics Lab), a Harvard Kennedy School graduate who spent three years working at organizations like the World Bank and Government of India before launching a startup to create India's first comprehensive land and property data infrastructure.

TEAL is building what Batra calls a "Bloomberg terminal for land" - a technology platform that aggregates, cleans, and analyzes data from over 650+ government agencies across multiple states, providing comprehensive property information to lenders, developers, and now individual consumers. With a team of 20+ people, operations across Delhi NCR, Maharashtra, and Karnataka, and backing from Info Edge, TEAL is tackling one of India's most complex institutional challenges: making property transactions transparent, efficient, and accessible.

The Problem: Information Asymmetry in India's Land Governance

India's land governance system is extraordinarily complex by historical design. Unlike countries with newer settlements like Australia that could start with clean slates and create unified cadastral maps, India's land records span centuries, with documents going back to the Mughal era in some historical settlements like Old Delhi. This complexity is compounded by a fragmented administrative structure where every state has different rules, different agencies, different digitization levels, and different languages.

"India is a very complicated land governance structure due to various different historical reasons how administration is done, how land is divided, how land use is administered," Batra explains. "What happens is this creates a space for a lot of misinformation and lack of very good credible information and data around landing property in India."

This information asymmetry has massive ripple effects. Banks are reluctant to lend against property because they can't verify title quality. Homeowners can't leverage their primary asset for credit. Developers struggle to acquire clear titles for projects. And the entire real estate market suffers from opacity and inefficiency.

"The way it's managed is through a lot of middlemen," Batra notes. "There's a famous movie called Khosla Ka Ghosla where you see this exact issue - someone encroaches on land, title is disputed. There are many examples people know in their families. It's a very real, very prevalent problem."

The Solution: TEAL's "Bloomberg Terminal for Land"

TEAL's approach is both ambitious and pragmatic. Rather than trying to fix the entire system (which would require massive government intervention and decades), TEAL focuses on the one thing it can control: making information accessible, interpretable, actionable.

TEAL aggregates data from: - Municipal records - Stamps and Revenue departments - Title transaction records - Court disputes across High Courts, District Courts, Revenue Courts, Tribunals - Development Authorities (like DDA in Delhi) - Land records (Katha, Khatauni, Jamabandi, Patta, etc. - varies by state) - 650+ government databases across multiple states

This is not a simple data scraping operation. TEAL deploys sophisticated algorithms for translation, entity extraction, and data cleaning. The team combines skills in research, data science, and engineering to create what Batra describes as "the equivalent of a civil school for land in India."

The Title Insurance Opportunity

One of TEAL's most strategic insights is recognizing the emerging title insurance market in India. The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act now mandates title insurance for developers, but enforcement is pending because no market exists yet. Only 16-17 policies have been approved by IRDAI so far, all at very high cost.

"The US title insurance market is a mature, multi-billion dollar industry with companies that have 100+ years of history," Batra explains. "They've created these massive databases by manually collating records from different local authorities. They maintain these comprehensively, underwrite based on that data, and have become global insurance giants. First American is one example."

TEAL is essentially creating the infrastructure that will make title insurance viable in India. By solving the data problem first, they're enabling the financial ecosystem that will eventually adopt and underwrite title insurance policies at scale.

The Entrepreneurial Journey: From Government Basement to Bangalore

Batra's path to entrepreneurship wasn't linear. After working at consulting firms in the US, the World Bank, and the Government of India, he reached a breaking point. "I don't think I can thrive in very large organizations. There's limited agency, rigid structures. That was the last step for me."

He co-founded TEAL in 2018 with his former colleague Rohan, whom he had worked with on housing research at think tanks. They started with a team of four in Delhi, working out of a basement in Rohan's uncle's office. For one year, they bootstrapped, putting in their own savings, taking informal favors, and accumulating debt.

After raising their seed round, TEAL moved to Bangalore a year ago and now has a team of 20+ people working across multiple states (Delhi NCR, Maharashtra, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore).

Building the Team: An Intern-Led Growth Strategy

What's remarkable about TEAL's team is how they grew it. Starting as a bootstrapped startup, they couldn't afford expensive hires. So they started with interns.

"We started with a model of just having interns from different places. Our first team member, Rafiq, was working as a derivatives trader in Bombay when we found him. He worked part-time with us and eventually joined full-time," Batra shares. "He started preparing documents and created a matrix ranking all states by their digitization levels. Gyan, our data lead, joined as a student intern while studying. More than half our team were formerly interns who became full-time."

Their recruitment strategy was channel-agnostic: LinkedIn, referrals, direct applications via website, internship portals like Instahire or Angelist. The one place that doesn't work: recruitment agencies.

The Challenges: Framing the Unframable

Batra is refreshingly candid about the challenges they've faced:

Challenge 1: Framing the Problem - This isn't a problem anyone thinks about. How do you explain that you're taking on something as complex as India's land governance system?

Challenge 2: What's Solvable? - As a private entity, what can they actually influence? Digitization must be done by government, courts must resolve disputes. TEAL focuses on the information gap.

Challenge 3: Finding the Business Model - Who pays? Lenders were the starting point, but it took time to figure out sustainable revenue streams.

Challenge 4: Raising Capital - "Investors are wary of real estate tech in India after Housing.com and other high-profile failures. We're fortunate to have found partners like Info Edge who understand the context and are patient with growth."

Challenge 5: Sales Cycles - Banks have excruciatingly long sales cycles with massive bureaucracies. "You're constantly doing ego depletion - trying to get your product tested, adopted, while people try to put you down to negotiate better deals."

Challenge 6: COVID-19 - Managing a remote team without personal touch, inability to read softer reactions and engagement levels.

Challenge 7: Staying Motivated - Working on thankless tasks with messy government data while seeing consumer tech startups get all the attention and funding.

Lessons for Entrepreneurs

Batra, despite being early in his entrepreneurial journey (just two years in when this interview was recorded), shares valuable wisdom:

1. Don't Let Perfect Be the Enemy of Good

"Perfectionism is something I struggle with. I credit my co-founder Rohan for this: you just have to keep moving forward. Be okay with making mistakes, learn from them, and continue progressing."

2. De-Personalize Your Venture

"Your venture is not you. You are more than that as a person. Have healthy distance, see things objectively. This helps when setbacks happen - you can get up the next morning and keep going."

3. Find Deep, Societal Problems

"We try to solve very hard, difficult problems in our society. These are context-specific to India. It's not something that's going to make you a unicorn quickly. But these are problems worth working on because they actually change day-to-day lives."

4. Choose Problems with Deeper Conviction

"Don't do it for superficial reasons. Do it for things you think you'll respect a few years down the line. Even if it doesn't work out, you can feel proud that you gave it an honest shot."

3. Build Support Networks

"Find informal support from friends, family, mentors. You never know where support will come from. Have an advisory group you can rely on during setbacks."

6. Learn to Work with Difficult People

"You'll work with unscrupulous characters. That's unexpected. You learn to become a better judge of character. Sometimes you have to work with people you don't respect to get the mission accomplished. Stay objective, move forward."

Advice for Young Entrepreneurs

Batra emphasizes focusing on problems that actually change society, even if they're not the most glamorous or well-funded:

• Urban Housing: Making housing affordable where jobs and opportunities exist
• Infrastructure: Providing core infrastructure in places that need it most (water, sanitation, transportation)
• Financing: Creating instruments for affordable housing and urban development
• Monitoring: Using technology to optimize project implementation and outcomes
• Geospatial Tech: Applying spatial analytics to optimize development

"There are many things behind the scenes that are improving day-to-day lives for different people but may not get that credit or traction. I would say follow those types of paths. Focus on problems that can actually change society, not necessarily things that will make you a marquee startup."

Key Takeaways

• Solve Real Problems: India's land litigation crisis affects millions, yet gets little attention. This creates both impact and opportunity.
• Better Information Enables Markets: You can't have efficient markets without transparent information. TEAL is creating the data foundation.
• Complexity Can Be an Asset: TEAL's competitive moat is their ability to handle complexity that others avoid.
• Bootstrap Creatively: Intern-led growth, basement offices, informal networks - do what it takes to get started.
• Find Your Co-Founders: Batra and Rohan worked together previously. Trust and shared experience mattered.
• Stay Motivated on Thankless Tasks: Cleaning messy government data isn't glamorous, but it's essential for the mission.
• De-Personalize Setbacks: Your startup doesn't define you. Maintain healthy distance.
• Focus on Conviction, Not Validation: Work on problems you deeply believe in, not just what's trendy.

As TEAL continues to expand across India and build the data infrastructure for India's property market, Batra's vision is clear: make land and property transactions as transparent and efficient as they can be, one database at a time. The journey is long, the problems are complex, but the potential impact - unlocking trillions in currently illiquid assets - could transform India's real estate landscape and financial inclusion.

About the Founder

Kshitij Batra is the CEO and Co-Founder of TEAL (Terra Economics and Analytics Lab). A Harvard Kennedy School graduate with a Master in Public Administration, International Development (MPA/ID), he previously worked at consulting firms in the US, the World Bank Group, and the Government of India. He co-founded TEAL in 2018 with a vision to solve India's land governance crisis through data democratization. He comes from a research and policy background, bringing a unique analytical lens to India's complex property market challenges.

TEAL (Terra Economics and Analytics Lab) is a technology startup building comprehensive land and property data infrastructure for India. The company works with over 650+ government databases to provide transparent, actionable property information to lending institutions, developers, and individual consumers. With products like TEAL Terminal (for institutions) and TEAL Check (for consumers), TEAL is creating the foundational data layer that India's real estate market needs to mature. Backed by Info Edge, TEAL is based in Bangalore with operations across multiple states including Delhi NCR, Maharashtra, and Karnataka.