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Running an ethical horse business in India: 3 challenges I hadn’t seen coming



It will probably come to you as no surprise that running an ethical horse business in India is very hard. Manjeev and I were well aware that the odds were stacked against us when, 6 years ago, we left the UK to set up a natural horsemanship centre in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of India’s capital. Prior to this, we’d spent almost two years getting trained with some of the best horse trainers out there. We also spent a lot of time in other horse businesses to try and get as realistic an idea as possible of what we were getting ourselves into. 

As we started our little horse centre, we were aware of a number of challenges ahead of us: 

1. Making money off horses is hard.

And it's harder when you care about your horses’ wellbeing. Horses are expensive animals to keep. They are fragile, easily get injured, and need very specific food to be at their optimum. Taking care of them is labour intensive and requires some skill, especially as you’ll often have one or more injured horses that will need specific medical attention. Once you add up all the costs, the margins are thin. This is especially so when you set standards that prioritise the horses’ wellbeing, such as limiting the number of hours they work in a day or selecting the best food. This isn’t an India-specific problem; it’s a global challenge that we were well aware of from the start. That’s the first thing horse people warn you about when you talk about starting a horse business: you don’t make money from horses. 

2. The weather is really tough 

The part of India in which we live is unbearably hot (over 40C) from April to June and flooded with monsoon rains until September. Temperatures continue to be very high (above 35C) in October, and in November, when the weather finally cools down, the pollution kicks in because of the crop fires. Basically, February and March are usually the only times we have nice temperatures and tolerable pollution levels. Shitty weather can be a major obstacle when you run an outdoor business like a horse centre. But here, again, we knew what we were getting into. 

3. There is a lack of interest in animal welfare 

Ghandi’s famous quote that a nation can be judged by the way it treats its animals, and the cows roaming around in the streets, makes many people believe that India is a country heavily focused on animal welfare. The truth, however, is that there are so many humans who need help that animal care takes a back seat. There are wonderful people who dedicate their lives to animals, but they remain a tiny minority. 

Since the pandemic, we have witnessed an explosion in horse riding in our area. But we were sorry to see that this did not seem to be accompanied by an interest in horses’ welfare. The majority of people who call us just want to ride, and ask to be referred to a riding club when we explain what we do with horses and suggest that natural horsemanship could be a great complement to riding classes. 

On the contrary, local riding clubs that mostly operate on thin margins and overworked horses produce a growing number of shattered horses that are dumped at the local NGO. Having said that, with series like “Heartland” on Netflix and other shows about connecting with horses, there are more and more kids and adults who are looking to build a better relationship with horses. The process is happening, but it is much slower than we had anticipated.

**

These were the challenges that we had expected, for the most part, when starting our horse business in India. On top of that, we discovered a whole new set of struggles that we hadn’t seen coming. 

  1. There is a lack of clear land titles 

Land is very expensive around the city, and most horse businesses can only afford to rent the area they need to operate. Horses require significant infrastructure and therefore investment, for which one would expect to have a lease deal over several years at least to break even on these investments. The issue is that a lot of the agricultural land in the country is either under dispute by family members (when land has been divided among heirs and they can’t agree on whose part belongs to who) or does not have a proper legal holding. In the not-so-distant past, most of these areas were villages with cattle and herds of goats. Village authorities allocated grazing lands to different families. Today, these grazing areas are in residential areas and are worth a fortune. The lands are sold and bought, even though, technically, those who were allowed to use them to graze never owned them in the first place. Encroaching on protected forest land is also rife. 

Over the last six years, we’ve seen multiple occurrences of horse businesses being kicked off land they were renting, which turned out to be illegal. This happened to us several times. We’ve had walls bulldozed on several occasions too. We’ve also had angry relatives of landlords invade our farm, protesting that they, too, should have been given parts of that land. 

In other words, even when we have a contract lease, we never know when we will have to move out. This means that we can’t make any serious investments in infrastructure, which in turn affects our setup. On the bright side, because of that issue, horse people have come up with brilliant temporary setups. If someone had told me one day that we’d have a moveable 20-horse stable, I would not have believed them. 

2. The majority of horses are physically broken.

Horses with physical injuries are in no way specific to India. One horse business owner told us that we could expect to have 30% of our horse power lame or injured at any given time and that we needed to factor this in into our business model (one of the best pieces of advice we’ve ever received!). There are horses with psychological and physical traumas everywhere in the world too. In Europe and the US, you can quite easily adopt a so-called "remedial horse," a horse that is physically sound but psychologically “difficult.” When we moved to India, we had planned to start by adopting remedial horses. We felt that our training would enable us to help them heal. 

The reality on the ground turned out to be very different. The only horses that people were willing to give were so physically broken that they couldn’t be used. We have since discovered that horses that become psychologically difficult to handle are usually considered naughty, and owners and trainers will continue trying until the horse physically can’t manage any more. 

Besides, most of the horses readily available already have serious injuries to start with. Most horses in our area are either thoroughbreds that come from the racing world or Marwaris. The racing industry starts horses when they’re 2 years old, years before their bodies have finished growing. By the time the horses’ racing careers are over, which is very young at around 3 or 4 years old, they often have serious injuries that will affect them for the rest of their lives. The poor Marwaris aren’t much better off, as they are also often started around 1.5-2 years old, when they are taught to “dance” or do “rewal”. I won’t go into the details of what this entails (feel free to google it), but suffices to say that it seriously messes up their body (not to say their brain.) 

Once you take all this into account, it doesn’t leave many horses out there to work with that haven’t already suffered from some chronic issue. That’s why more and more people are resorting to breeding their own horses, or importing them from Europe, just so they can control the upbringing of the horse. 

This is not to say that all horse owners are terrible. Far from it. The issue pertains mostly to horse businesses, where money is made from horses. 

3. Finding dependable employees

To be honest, I really should have seen this coming. I grew up hearing my dad talk about the old Jewish curse, “I wish you staff!” Every business owner I know, horse or no horse, struggles to find the right people. Somehow, because India has a major over-population problem, we had expected it would be easier to find reliable staff. We are told there used to be plenty of great grooms, but most of them have gone to the Middle East (and Japan even!) to work as jockeys and grooms. I think it’s a great opportunity for them as they get paid so much better than in India. But it has left a big gap. There is a wave of desperately poor so-called “tribal” people who have come to fill that gap, but alcoholism is a major problem. Working as a groom is a physically demanding job, especially when the weather is so tough, and I really can’t blame them for wanting to do something else. But the result is that it’s very challenging to find a stable (pun intended) team. 

The issue around land titles also makes it very difficult to live on the farm with the horses. Most horse business owners live in flats in town. 

4. The journey is worth the ride 

Having said all that (and thank you for allowing me to let this rant out), I wouldn’t change our decision for the world. The last few years have been the most extraordinary of my life. Yes, I’ve cried tears of anger and tears of despair, but I have laughed and smiled twice as much. Horses have enabled us to meet extraordinary and like-minded people who want to create change. This is terribly exciting. Our horses have changed so many people’s lives, including our own. India is a challenging country to live in, no doubt, but it is incredible too. There is, really, never a dull day. 


One of our ex-grooms, passed out drunk in the middle of the day in the stable 



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