Indian based startup, Phool, secured funding worth $8 million USD in a round led by Sixth Sense Ventures. Other existing investors like actress Alia Bhatt and IAN also continued to fund the company.
Phool is a start-up that is involved in the beauty and fragrance industry. They produce incense sticks and cones in a way that helps the environment. The wellness of the world is the company’s main priority. The company collects flowers that are thrown around in places of worship and uses them to create fragrant incense sticks and cones.
Founded in almost 5 years ago, back in 2017, the company has successfully recycled 11,600 metric tons of temple waste.
The founder of the company, Ankit Agarwal is an alum of Symbiosis University situated in Pune. Ankit Agarwal while walking around his hometown of Kanpur realised that that people were bottling the water from Ganges due to its religious significance even though the river was clearly murky and polluted. He knew something had to be done and came up with Phool which not only works with religious institutions to clean up the rivers but also provides employment opportunities to almost 80 under privileged women too!
Mr Agarwal also said that as people dumped loads of flowers into the Ganges, the colourful flowers would immediately disintegrate due to the besmirched water. The flowers were also laced with pesticides and fertilizers which in turn make the waters polluted and toxic. All the blame cannot be dumped on to factories and tanneries as pollution is enabled from the ground up from individuals all the way to multi million dollar corporations.
The founder and CEO of Sixth Sense Ventures, Nikhil Vohra described the fragrance field to not be traversed much by investors and researchers which makes it a whole realm of business that has so much growth potential. People around the world, including Indians are now looking to reduce their carbon footprint places Phool at a prime position to grow leaps and bounds in such a short time. As more people get environment conscience, Phool’s demand continues to grow at a steady and healthy rate. The brand is also slowly expanding to other countries as their demand worldwide is slowly picking some traction. This puts Phool in a great position not only to grow in India but also worldwide and even improve the health of the environment one incense stick at a time.
