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Yeshoda Rose Bazaar

The story of Hoovu started a long time ago - both us (were sisters, if the names didnt give that away) - grew up on floriculture farms: for as long as we can remember, we grew up hearing about harvest cycles, auction prices and freight rates.

Our father started his rose farm in 1994, the year Yeshoda Karuturi was born. He then grew to have farms in India, Ethiopia and Kenya. Along the way we saw how the industry changed dramatically - from unorganised, fragmented markets to the setting up of the International Flower Auction Bangalore, the first exports of cut roses from Bangalore and the awe-inspiring Kenyan farm, which was the worlds largest rose farm.

We both have also worked at Karuturi, our family business - Yeshoda as the Executive Director and Rhea during her quarters off. While working in the cut flower industry, we saw first hand the enormous scalability in the industry, but what was shocking is that while bouquet flowers are big, most Indians dont actually interact with flowers in that way.

Most Indians interact with traditional flowers - jasmine, marigold, chrysanthemum, bud roses etc - every single day. They use it in their morning prayer, to decorate their hair, to hang up in their auto, car, offices. Traditional flower usage is a ubiquitous need, just like the daily newspaper or milk.

And yet this enormous sector of the flower market - making up 481,907 acres of production in India - has barely changed in the last 3 decades. The supply chain is still incredibly fragmented, unorganised and the wastage is as high as 40%. Thats around 192,000 acres of land being used to produce flowers that are just thrown away.