The multi-functionality of landscapes sculpted by Hindu, Buddhist, and Animist communities in tropical, temperate, and alpine biomes in Indian Himalaya was analyzed using remote sensing, ground sampling, and participatory/rural appraisal tools. All across, traditional people articulated business as common and confined interlinked “professions.” Cultural values favoured equity, environmental sustainability, and social integration. Humanitarian, philanthropic, and altruistic motives prevailed over profits in exchanges. Profit-centric business appeared in the late nineteenth century with the colonial forest policy of revenue earning from timber previously utilized by people only for subsistence due to cultural/knowledge barriers. Agricultural business enterprises emerged after 1970 with the launch of national policies subsidizing inputs and securing staple food and the fast growing market of organic food, herbal medicine, and other non-timber traditional products. Amidst widespread negative impacts, there are a few landscapes testifying to the positive impacts of the market on biodiversity. Scientific improvement in traditional manure production and agroforestry, adoption of vermitechnology, rehabilitation of degraded lands, people-led ecotourism, and cooperative marketing/value addition can promote business coupled with biodiversity conservation. It is concluded that (i) enhancing local income from value addition/marketing is now crucial for conserving forest biodiversity, (ii) people need to be clearly informed of business/market risks and uncertainties, (iii) value addition and marketing should be included in community forestry currently confined to restoration/protection, and (iv) there is a need of participatory research to uncover the science underlying traditional biodiversity/land uses and prospective market products, and to incorporate this information in People’s Biodiversity Registers.