Startup Deep Dive : Phool.co – the temple flower waste that turned into a profitable incense and vegan-leather business

Ankit Agarwal used to watch temple staff in Kanpur carry armfuls of marigold and rose offerings to the banks of the Ganga and tip them straight into the river, pesticide residue and all. In FY25, the company he built to catch those flowers before they hit the water turned a profit of ₹2.5 crore on revenue of ₹77 crore ($8.0 million at $1 ≈ ₹96.0), its first profitable year since starting in 2017 with a bucket and a handful of flowers.

Phool.co is best known as an incense brand that charges ₹165 to ₹500 for a box of cones a roadside shop sells for ₹10 to ₹20, an eight-to-sixteen-times mark-up few packaged-goods founders would attempt. What that pricing hides is a second, stranger business: the same flower waste, left to sit too long, once grew a fungal mat that Phool turned into a material it calls Fleather — a bio-leather now piloted by PVH Corp, the parent of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, a supply chain that starts on a Ganga ghat and ends on a European fashion house’s cutting table.

Quick facts

What they do

Phool collects floral waste discarded at temples and mosques after religious rituals — marigold, rose and other offerings that would otherwise be dumped in rivers such as the Ganga — and turns it into two distinct product lines sold to two different buyers. To Indian consumers, it sells charcoal-free incense sticks and cones, reed diffusers and other home-fragrance items priced as a premium wellness brand, distributed through its own D2C site, quick-commerce apps and Amazon. To global fashion and materials buyers, it sells (and is piloting) Fleather, a leather-like sheet material grown from the same flower biomass, positioned as a non-animal, non-plastic alternative to conventional and synthetic leather.

The origin

Agarwal, a Pune-trained computer engineer who had worked as an automation scientist at Symantec, visited the Ganga ghats in Kanpur around the Makara Sankranti festival in January 2015 with a friend. What he saw stayed with him: pilgrims bathing in and drinking from a river into which temples were emptying tonnes of used flowers every day, flowers grown with pesticides that were now leaching into the water. He teamed up with Prateek Kumar, an environmental engineer who had worked at Apollo Tyres, and the two set out to intercept the waste before it reached the river. Neither man came from a materials or consumer-goods background; the idea was closer to an engineering fix for a pollution problem than a product pitch, and the incense business that eventually paid the bills grew out of a search for something useful to make from the collected flowers.

The struggle years

The gap between the idea and a sellable product took roughly eighteen months. Through 2016 and into 2017, Agarwal and Kumar worked out of a makeshift laboratory, and their first obstacle was not chemistry but trust: temple priests and staff who had emptied flowers into the river for generations saw no reason to hand them instead to two strangers with buckets, and early pitches were repeatedly turned away before the company built enough of a collection relationship to operate at any scale. The company was incorporated as Kanpur Flowercycling Private Limited on 20 July 2017 once that first supply chain held.

A second, unplanned setback arrived in 2019. During the monsoon, stored piles of flower waste at the company’s Kanpur facility grew a strange white fibrous fungal mat — the kind of contamination that would normally mean a batch, and the raw material behind it, had to be thrown out. Instead of discarding it, the team examined the mat and found it behaved like a woven material: strong, flexible and leather-like when tanned. What looked like a spoiled batch became the starting point for Fleather, but only after roughly three more years of R&D, run out of IIT Kanpur’s incubation facilities, to turn a fungal accident into a material that could be cut, stitched and sold.

The turning point

The moment that changed Phool’s scale was its Series A. Before it closed on 5 April 2022, the company had raised roughly ₹3.38 crore in seed money from Social Alpha and angel backers, a $1.4 million pre-Series A round in August 2020 led by IAN Fund alongside the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, and an undisclosed sum from actor Alia Bhatt in October 2021 — capital that, combined, had kept a lab-stage biomaterials project alive but not much more. The Series A brought in ₹60.5 crore ($8 million) in a single round led by Sixth Sense Ventures, more than the company had raised in its first five years put together, with IAN Fund and Alia Bhatt returning as participants. The round did two things at once: it funded Fleather’s move from prototype wallets and sandals to pilot supply for global fashion houses, and it put a professional consumer-goods investor’s board seat (Sixth Sense’s Nikhil Vora) behind what had, until then, been run largely as a founder-led social enterprise. Within months, Fleather was named one of 15 global finalists for the Earthshot Prize’s 2022 “Build a Waste-Free World” category, and Phool had opened a Fleather pilot with PVH Corp, the parent of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.

The money behind it

• Seed (pre-2020): approximately ₹3.38 crore from Social Alpha (backed by Tata Trusts) and early angel investors, non-equity assistance included, to build the first collection and processing pilot (IIT Kanpur, October 2021 press release)
• August 2020 – pre-Series A: $1.4 million led by IAN Fund, with the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, to expand research and scale collection operations (Social Alpha announcement, 27 August 2020)
• October 2021 – strategic investment: actor Alia Bhatt joins as an investor; amount undisclosed, framed by the company as validation ahead of a larger raise (IIT Kanpur press release, 7 October 2021)
• April 2022 – Series A: ₹60.5 crore ($8 million) led by Sixth Sense Ventures, with existing investors IAN Fund and Alia Bhatt participating; earmarked for scaling operations and accelerating Fleather R&D (YourStory and Forbes India, 5 April 2022; IIT Kanpur)
• Total raised: reported at roughly $12.7 million across all rounds to date, as tracked by data provider Tracxn (accessed September 2026) — no priced valuation has been disclosed at any stage (Forbes India, YourStory, April 2022)

How it makes money

The visible business is consumer incense sold at a steep premium: Phool’s cones and sticks are priced between ₹165 and ₹500 a pack against a commodity agarbatti benchmark of roughly ₹10 to ₹20, an eight-to-sixteen-times mark-up justified by charcoal-free formulation, Fair for Life-Fairtrade and Ecocert Organic and Natural certification, and a sustainability story built around the temple-waste supply chain. That premium, though, has not historically translated into a wide margin: Registrar of Companies filings show Phool spent ₹1.13 for every ₹1 of revenue in FY24 and ₹0.98 in FY25, meaning the swing from a ₹5 crore loss to a ₹2.5 crore profit came mostly from cost discipline rather than pricing power, even as advertising and marketing spend rose 54% to ₹16.2 crore in FY25. The part outsiders tend to get wrong is assuming the incense mark-up is the business’s real margin engine; on the filings, it is closer to a brand-building loss-leader that only turned a profit in its eighth year of trading.

• Incense and home fragrance (D2C, quick commerce, Amazon): the core revenue line, priced as premium wellness rather than commodity agarbatti (Behind the Feature analysis, 2026)
• Florafoam: a biodegradable, Styrofoam-style packaging material made from the same flower biomass (Wikipedia; The Logical Indian)
• Organic compost (“Mitti”): sold from residual processed flower waste (StartupTalky)
• Fleather (B2B): licensing and supply of a bio-leather material, with pilots including PVH Corp; as of the most recent public updates it remains at prototype and pilot stage — wallets, sling bags, sandals and trainers — with no disclosed standalone commercial revenue yet (GlobalIndian)

The numbers

Figures are drawn from Registrar of Companies filings for Kanpur Flowercycling Private Limited as reported in trade press, and from StartupTalky’s compiled revenue series, corroborated by Tofler’s independently calculated FY24 growth rate of 74.9% year-on-year (which implies a FY23 base consistent with the figure below).

FY22 and FY23 figures are as compiled by StartupTalky; FY24 and FY25 revenue and profit/loss figures are from Registrar of Companies filings as reported by Startuppedia and D2C Insider Pulse on 11 and 12 May 2026 respectively. FY25 revenue from operations alone was ₹76.5 crore, up 57% on FY24’s ₹48.7 crore, with the balance made up of other income.

Where the money comes from

• Consumer sales of incense and home fragrance, sold through Phool’s own D2C site, quick-commerce platforms (Blinkit, Zepto) and Amazon, account for the overwhelming share of the ₹77 crore FY25 total — ₹76.5 crore of it was booked as revenue from operations rather than other income (Startuppedia/D2C Insider Pulse, May 2026)
• Raw material sourcing spans temple cities well beyond Kanpur — Varanasi, Ayodhya, Kedarnath, Badrinath, Bodh Gaya and Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh are among the collection points named in company and press coverage (Swissnex India; The Logical Indian)
• The surprise: Fleather, the B2B bio-leather arm that drives most of Phool’s global press coverage and its 2022 Earthshot Prize finalist status, does not yet appear as a disclosed separate revenue line in the company’s filings — years after the PVH Corp pilot was announced, the public record shows prototypes (wallets, bags, sandals, trainers) and pilot supply rather than priced commercial contracts (GlobalIndian; earthshotprize.org)

The risks

• Perishable, relationship-dependent raw material: flower waste must be collected within hours of being discarded at a temple or it degrades before it can be processed, which means output is tied to daily logistics across dozens of collection points and to temples continuing to hand over waste they have historically emptied into rivers for free (Swissnex India; The Logical Indian)
• Profitability still leans on cost control, not margin: Phool spent ₹1.13 for every ₹1 earned in FY24 and ₹0.98 in FY25; its first profitable year coincided with a 54% jump in advertising spend to ₹16.2 crore, so the FY25 turnaround has not yet been tested against a year of restrained marketing (Startuppedia/D2C Insider Pulse, May 2026)
• The higher-profile business is unproven at scale: Fleather has held pilot-stage status with partners including PVH Corp since at least 2022, with prototypes rather than disclosed commercial volumes; the biomaterial that generates the most global recognition remains the part of the business furthest from proven, repeatable revenue (GlobalIndian; earthshotprize.org)

The takeaway

The most valuable thing Phool made was not planned. The company set out to solve a pollution problem and stumbled, during a monsoon in 2019, into a fungal mat growing on a batch of flower waste that should have been thrown away. That accident, not the original incense business, is what won a global prize, attracted a European luxury conglomerate’s attention and gave the company a second identity as a materials-science startup rather than a wellness brand. The transferable lesson is not “turn waste into leather” — that is specific to Phool’s inputs — but a more general habit: treat contamination, spoilage and other operational failures as data worth examining before they are discarded, because the by-product of a mistake can end up mattering more than the product the company was actually trying to make.

Frequently asked questions

What does Phool.co make?

Phool makes charcoal-free incense sticks, cones and home-fragrance products from recycled temple flower waste, sold directly to consumers, plus Fleather, a leather-like biomaterial made from the same waste that it supplies on a pilot basis to fashion and materials buyers, including PVH Corp, the parent of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.

Who founded Phool.co and when?

Phool was founded in Kanpur in July 2017 by Ankit Agarwal, a former Symantec automation scientist, and Prateek Kumar, a former environmental engineer at Apollo Tyres. The company is legally registered as Kanpur Flowercycling Private Limited.

How much funding has Phool.co raised?

Phool has raised funding across a seed round from Social Alpha, a $1.4 million pre-Series A in August 2020 led by IAN Fund, an October 2021 investment from actor Alia Bhatt, and a ₹60.5 crore ($8 million) Series A in April 2022 led by Sixth Sense Ventures. Data provider Tracxn puts total funding at roughly $12.7 million as of September 2026; no priced valuation has been publicly disclosed.

Is Phool.co profitable?

Yes, for the first time in FY25, according to Registrar of Companies filings reported in May 2026: the company posted a ₹2.5 crore profit on ₹77 crore of revenue, having reported a ₹5 crore loss on ₹50 crore of revenue in FY24.

What is Fleather?

Fleather is a leather-like material Phool grows from processed temple flower waste, discovered after a fungal mat formed on stored flower waste in 2019. It was named a finalist in the Earthshot Prize’s 2022 “Build a Waste-Free World” category and is in pilot supply with fashion houses including PVH Corp, though it has not yet disclosed commercial-scale revenue.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Wikipedia, “PHOOL” (accessed September 2026)
• IIT Kanpur, “IIT Kanpur-backed biomaterials startup and D2C wellness brand, Phool.co® raises $8M in funding from Sixth Sense Ventures” (April 2022)
• IIT Kanpur, “Alia Bhatt invests in IIT Kanpur backed Direct-to-consumer (D2C) start-up Phool.co” (7 October 2021)
• YourStory, “[Funding alert] Alia Bhatt backed Phool raises $8M Series A” (5 April 2022)
• Forbes India, “Exclusive – India’s first biomaterial startup Phool.co raises $8 million in Series A funding” (April 2022)
• Social Alpha, “Social Alpha backed Flowercycling Start-up Phool.co raises $1.4 Million in pre-Series A round led by IAN Fund” (27 August 2020)
• StartupTalky, “Phool: Transforming Temple Waste into Sustainable Innovation” (accessed September 2026)
• Behind the Feature (Substack), “How Phool Charged ₹165 for Incense That Costs ₹10 Everywhere Else” (accessed September 2026)
• Tofler, company financial summary for Kanpur Flowercycling Private Limited, CIN U37100UP2017PTC095219 (accessed 11 September 2026)
• Tracxn, company profile for Phool (accessed September 2026)
• Startuppedia, “Phool.co, a Sustainable Startup Backed by Alia Bhatt, Clocks Rs 77 Cr Revenue in FY25” (11 May 2026)
• D2C Insider Pulse, “Phool.co Turns Profitable in FY25 as Revenue Surges 54%” (12 May 2026)
• Swissnex India, “Phool: The Indian Startup Turning Waste Temple Flowers into Biodegradable ‘Fleather'” (accessed September 2026)
• The Logical Indian, “Phool Transforms Millions of Discarded Temple Flowers into Eco-Friendly Products, Creating Jobs and Protecting India’s Rivers” (accessed September 2026)
• Phool.co, “Our Story” (company website, accessed September 2026)
• GlobalIndian, “Ankit Agarwal’s Phool: Turning floral waste into vegan leather” (accessed September 2026)
• The Earthshot Prize, “Fleather – Earthshot Prize Finalist 2022” (earthshotprize.org, accessed September 2026)

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