India, July 11 -- We have developed a kind of "tree blindness", says Uday Krishna Peddireddi.

One day, a caller may report that a decades-old banyan is set to have a road built around it. Another day, he receives news that a row of tamarind trees is set to make way for a flyover. Or a local homeowner may text him, complaining about an old imli shooting roots through his compound wall. "Can you do something or should I chop it down? I have to save the wall."

He first noticed the effects as a young man in Hyderabad. "When I was a teenager, I didn't have to go far to get to a banyan tree," he says. "As the years passed, I now have to go further and further."

Never a complainer, he decided, as soon as he could, to act.

In 2010, his compan...