Image source: Phool.co
Is sustainability even a thing in 2024? Well, the question is debatable. But since we are not here for a debate, let's talk numbers. According to a 2020 McKinsey customer sentiment survey, around 60+ percent of individuals shared that they would like to pay more for a product if it comes with a sustainable packaging.
Okay, now even this is a matter of the past.
But there is also a recent study. Again, about US consumers, done by NielsenIQ that highlights around 78% of consumers feel that sustainable lifestyle is important to them.
What about India?
Yes, even Indian consumers prioritise natural products. Coming to numbers again, around 1 in 3 urban Indian consumers like natural products because of their health, and 25% vouch for them because these products are eco-friendly. Understandable.
And here's where entrepreneurs can play big. If they are able to think of innovative sustainable business models, they can hit the sweet spot just too fast - just like phool.co.
It's an unconventional business model. The challenges the venture faced in the initial days are many. But what worked in the favour was strategies. Is it?
Well let's see it from scratch. Ofcourse the model.
Inception and Founding Story of Phool.co
Makar sankranti. A big day for Hindus. To give you a crux of the day - it's celebrated to mark the sun's journey from one hemisphere to another, south to north.
On this day, Hindus often visit temples, now there are many geographical ideologies too. For example, according to legends, on this day, Lord Surya visited his son Shani. And in certain parts of India, Makar Sankranti is also known as the harvest festival.
But, let's get back to Ankit, the founder.
So, similar to all Hindus out there, even Ankit visited a temple with his friend back in 2015. He observed a lot of floral waste. The waste accumulated around the shore and it was stinging badly.
In short, the holy Ganges was polluted.
The reason for pollution is many, not just flowers. Most of the household, multiple religious waste, and industrial waste goes into the water bodies.
The scene, the waste around the shore disturbed Ankit. And so he had a discussion with his close mate, Prateek Kumar, just like we do.
Ankit Agarwal and Prateek Kumar thought about this issue. It took them both a year and a half to do the research of what they can do with so much flower waste.
And here's where Phool.co came into existence.
The mission was simple - repurpose all the flowers from the places of worship. But with this mission they were able to solve many problems, like preserving water bodies, empowering women to earn their livelihood, and so much more.
Early Development and Market Research
When Ankit came with an idea that they can do something new with the waste, the problem was, WHAT NEW?
To solve the problem, he ran miles (obviously not physically), but he did put in much efforts. Only to know that there is no relevant research done on how much floral waste is generated in India across all the states. There was literally no research.
Ankit basically had no infrastructure at place.
He went to IIT Kanpur, met professor Amitabha Bhandopadhyay. He visited his office, explained the idea, but stated his issues with infrastructure. BIRAC funded BioNest SIIC fortunately had all the infrastructure.
He used the facilities and that's how PHOOL was incubated.
Partnership Formation
Phool is a D2C startup. It's a private limited company working on the circular economy model.
In easy words, it collects floral waste of people turns it into multiple products and sell it back to them. Now let's look at the brains that made PHOOL possible:
Ankit Agarwal
First thing first, Ankit is not an IITian. He holds a bachelor degree and has completed his master's in innovation management at Symbiosis International University, Pune. Coming to bachelor's, he did BSc in Computer Science from PICT in Pune.
Initially he did a project in turn at Symantic. He also holds an automation engineer degree.
Ankit is definitely a research freak.
He has published around 17+ research papers. He is a patent holder. And also a member of Asia society as Asia 21 Young Leader 2016.
Prateek Kumar
He is the co-founder of Phool.co. Similar to Ankit, even Prateek has done engineering but from Bhartiya Vidyapeeth. He then did his master's from Amity University in marketing.
He started out as an engineering trainee at Woodgroup Engineering Pvt Ltd. Then he joined as territory sales in charge at Apollo Tyres Ltd. He then founded Berry Tarts LLP in Nov 2014 till April 2017.
Then Ankit Agarwal happened to him, he joined hands with him for the project. He's now the head of operations at Phool.co.
Now, let's talk the main part. The board members. PHOOL has amazing minds working with them. The technoprenuers bring a lot to the table, some renowned ones are:
Manoj Kumar (Co founder and CEO of Social Alpha)
Nathalie Kylander (Managing director of DRK foundation)
Ankit Agarwal (Founder and CEO of KFPL).
Early Challenges Phool.co Faced
Flowers. Phool.co is all about flowers and that's why it requires a majority of it, in bulk. But procuring it all was not a walk in the garden for founders.
They had to tie up with temples. Convince the temples that they will take up the flowers everyday. Search for all possible options of procurement.
There was a challenge here. Sentiments. Rituals. People will not be able to digest this fact easily that the flower they are offering to God will be recycled.
But Ankit had to convince. He went to temple authorities and said, “Tera tujhko arpan”. Which means, whatever is of god's, he will get it back.
Initially Ankit sourced flowers from Kashi Vishwanath Temple - 5 tonnes a day.
But as of today's date, Phool is recycling over 8.4 tonnes of floral waste from multiple temples in Uttar Pradesh on a daily basis.
And what about COVID times?
Well, the company was founded in 2018. COVID happened in 2020, and it hit PHOOL as well.
Because of lockdown nobody was visiting temples, that's why no flowers. But the company then reached out flower vendors as they were also not able to sell all the flowers. Hence, the raw material procurement issue was managed.
PHOOL pays heavy attention to its R&D. Why? We'll get into that later.
Seed Funding and Investment Rounds
Any and every idea need funds for it to come to reality. Like all other startups out there, even Ankit and Prateek struggled with funds. They had their personal savings, they got some help from family and friends.
Initially all it took for them to start up was - ₹72,000 and 2 kg of floral waste. With this amount and quantity they shaped the whole model and framework.
But, to run the business smoothly, there was a need of more funds.
Fund generation
Like all other entrepreneurs out there, instead of going to VCs, they first decided to make the most out of their entrepreneurial skills.
How come?
Both Ankit and Prateek had amazing entrepreneurial skills. They presented their idea to multiple business model competitions being conducted by IIM Ahmedabad and IIT Bombay.
Finally, in January 2016, the founders were able to raise a grant of 20 lakhs through IIT Kanpur and DRK foundations
COVID happened!
Like all other businesses, even PHOOL faced THE COVID CRISIS. But the company was able to pace up its operations by getting funds from Social Alpha and IAN fund. The capital procured was around $2M.
The Alia Effect
In 2020, PHOOL was everywhere - on all the social media and new channels.
Why?
Because of the loyal angel investor - Alia Bhatt. The amount is still undisclosed but this one action gave the company massive fame. It gathered more visibility.
The company in its Series A funding raised $8M (₹605 millions) from sixth sense ventures and more.
Launch Phase and Market Entry
The name of the company PHOOL is in hindi, which means flower. The logo is also of a flower. And the tagline is “Made from the Temple Flowers”.
Phool is India's first biomaterial startup. The company was initially into incense sticks. But let's go to the past.
Whenever we think of incense sticks, the image that conjures in our mind is of a small shop nearby a temple or a retail store selling it in packets.
But phool didn't go with traditional marketing tactics.
Audience
It instead targeted 25-40 aged individuals who live away from their home. The whole act of burning incense sticks is a daily ritual in an Indian family. But this demographic of individuals even light up incense sticks while doing yoga, meditating, or relaxing.
Positioning
Phool products are completely organic. Every stick is dipped into natural essential oils - be it the traditional rose and nargis, or something now popular like citronella and eucalyptus.
Because of the demographics chosen and the positioning planned, PHOOL became the first incense brand to take a complete digital-first approach for brand building.
With this approach, PHOOL was launched in 2017.
What is so different about Phool?
The positioning of the brand was done this way from the start - natural, environment friendly, and for a social cause. To make these three vision come possible, multiple steps were taken:
Products being made from flowers. That's why it is charcoal free. Why does it matter? Charcoal releases sulphur dioxide which is harmful for environment
Compostable packaging materials used for products to be packed. Company uses seed papers which can easily be grown into plants after use
All the products are handcrafted by women. The artisans are from marginalised sections of society. Hence it provides each woman respectable livelihood.
Now, let's get into packaging…
If looked into the package of the products sold, everything is very colourful. There is no specific colour pallette. In Fact the whole website is colourful. But there are three components you can see in all the packages:
A female who the company has employed to make the incense sticks (basically her portrait and a message)
A river that the company is protecting from getting polluted
A landscape picture of a temple from where the flowers were collected
That's not it.
During festivals, Phool comes up with unique products and branding ideas.
For example, raksha bandhan. An year ago, Gajesh Mitkari curated and designed two unique boxes for phool. The illustrations, characters, colours were chosen according to the festival itself.
In Holi, the company came up with a tagline of #phoolwaliholi, and many celebrities participated in this. The brand collaborated with many influencers and did multiple giveaways to increase visibility during Holi itself.
Coming to the seed based packaging, a remarkable move, phool has taken . All the products sold by the brand, the packets can easily be transformed into plants hence the whole cycle of purchasing becomes environment friendly.
Recognition and Awards Phool.co Received So Far
Phool is an idea that's just too unique. That's why the brand and its founder received both national and international recognition for the innovation, some remarkable ones are:
United Nations Young Leaders Award for Sustainable Development Goals
The Unilever Young Entrepreneur Award, 2017
United Nations Momentum of Change Award at COP, 2018
The ‘Goalkeepers’ award by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation GSG Millennial Honour, 2018
Asia Sustainability Award, 2020
Hong Kong Alquity Transforming Lives Awards
London Breaking the Wall of Science
Berlin Wharton India Economic Forum
BIRAC Innovator Award, 2021 for FLEATHER by The Hon’ble Vice President of India Shri Venkaiah Naidu Ji
PETA India's Best Innovation in Vegan Fashion Award, 2021
Finalist at the Earthshot prize, 2022
Back in 2018, Ankit was also mentioned in the popular ‘Forbes 30 under 30 list'.
Now, How Did Phool.co Adapt To The Changing Markets?
As mentioned previously Phool was awarded the Innovator award for its product Fleather.
Why are we talking about fleather now?
Phool was expanding its operations. It was able to procure raw materials in bulk. The product line kept on increasing, but still a lot of raw materials were there to work on.
And at that time the company was able to discover that microbes can transfer flowers into a material similar to leather. At this moment, the company again invested heavily on its R&D, and fleather came into existence in 2021.
What's florafoam?
Again made from temple flowers, florafoam is an alternative to thermocol. If looked into the issue, 91% of thermocol is for single use only. But on the other hand, florafoam is 100% biodegradable and is customisable to any shape, size, or strength.
That's not it. Phool has successfully gotten into developing several more prototypes. Starting from wallets to shoes, all these are cruelty free alternatives which probably can be industry disruptors in the near future.
Phool.co Entered Into The Market With A Long-term Vision, And…
Let's talk numbers again now. The annual revenue phool recorded as on March 31, 2023 is $3.56M. The valuation of the company as on April 05, 2022 was $23.2M. The company is profitable. It's investing heavily on its R&D, expanding everyday.
If you look into the website, you can notice - Badrinath Collection, Bambooless Incense Collection, Essential Oils, Gift Boxes, Decor Products, and so much more. Again, there's a super unique Ayodhya collection, because why not?
Phool knows its audience well, it's catering to its audience the right way round, so will it be profitable?
Well, it's an open ended question, it can be and can be not. But for now, the brand is capturing the eyes of the target audience the fastest way around!