42: Phool Co – Made From Temple Flowers
It was the day of Makara Sankranti, an ancient Indian festival marking the end of the winter solstice, celebrated by bathing in the sacred waters of the river Ganges. On that cold winter morning in 2015, Ankit Agarwal, founder of Phool Co took his friend Jakub, who was visiting him from the Czech Republic to see Ghats of the River Ganges. They watched as truckloads of temple flowers were being dumped in the river, and at that very moment, they saw sunlight hit the water and an oily chemical film float onto the surface of the water. Ankit struggled to explain to Jakub, why a river so revered was ignored and polluted and why he couldn’t do anything about it. Ankit visited the temples the next to assess and understand the magnitude of the problem. That day he decided to be the change to create a movement. He founded Phool Co and became the genesis of the ‘flowercycling’ technology. Through innovation, they began to offer products made from temple flowers.
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