00:00Why I do this business is, or
how I can serve the community is,
00:04by being able to give them an opportunity
to work, a fair opportunity.
00:09I cannot be everywhere,
I cannot control what happens.
00:12But I can at least make sure that
everyone has that opportunity.
00:26So, my name is Ankit Agarwal.
00:28I was born and brought up in
Kanpur Uttar Pradesh, that is India.
00:31Then I started this company
Kanpur Flower Cycling Private Limited,
00:36where we collect waste
flowers from temples and
00:39convert them into eco-friendly
products that have wide markets and
00:44that replace already existing
chemical-based products.
00:50I was in Kanpur, the place where
I was born and brought up, and
00:53I had invited my Czech friend,
Kuba who was with me.
00:56That day it was Makar Sankranti,
which is an Indian festival that
01:00marks the ending of winters and
welcoming of summers.
01:04So all the farmers,
children, mothers, everyone,
01:07takes a dip in the river Ganges,
in that dirty slimy water.
01:11We didn't even know to touch the water,
it was so dirty.
01:14And I started talking
about the River Ganges.
01:16I think I told him about the religious
significance of the river Ganges.
01:20And he asked me a question, if this river
is so sacred, why is it so polluted?
01:25I blamed the fecal sludge, the industrial
waste, the household waste and everything.
01:30And he asked me a question,
why don't you do something about it and
01:33I was like, this is the Ganges.
01:36How can anyone do anything about it?
01:39And the moment I said this,
01:40a nearby temple dumped in
a truckloads of flour in the river.
01:44And there was this grayish chemical
layer that was formed on the water and
01:50I had never even thought of
temple waste as pollution.
01:54We Indians like,
have been doing this for centuries.
01:59we Indians put in about 8 million
tons of these flowers in the waters.
02:03All the pesticides that are used to grow
these flowers mixes with the river water
02:07making it highly toxic.
02:08That is the leading cause of diarrhea,
hepatitis and severe cholera across India
02:13and Bangladesh where the water flows,
and no one has ever thought about this.
02:17So I started talking to all
the stakeholders involved in the supply
02:21chain of the flowers, the farmers, the
markets, what happens to these flowers.
02:26Finally, I decided to form a company
where we can collect these flowers and
02:33We started making incense
out of Temple flowers.
02:35We make incense that
are completely chemical free,
02:38which are hand rolled
the natural essential oils.
02:44Luckily, one day I came across this
strange organism that had developed upon
02:49the pile of one of our unused flowers.
02:51And we were able to make a material which
behaves completely like leather and
02:56is made from hay and flowers.
02:58This is a material
completely made from waste,
03:01has a superior life than leather,
little animal leather,
03:05you have a fixed size height, and it
takes, animal takes three years to grow.
03:10With our experiments and our r&d you
can do the same thing in 27 days.
03:15So Styrofoam is the fifth
biggest pollutant on Earth.
03:18As of now, mankind does not know,
where to recycle,
03:20you have to either compress it,
or burn it, or put it in soil.
03:24And once you put it in soil,
it stays there for more than 1000 years.
03:28So we've been able to, make a
biodegradable, home compostable alternate
03:33to Styrofoam made from flowers,
and, its, price effective.
03:36So this whole cycle of
the flowers was complete
03:41When we started, at that point of time,
we would struggle finding people who would
03:46want to work with us,
pick up flowers, segregate them.
03:49One day these two women, they came and
they were very happy to work with us.
03:52This went on for a month that they
happily completed all the work.
03:56I asked them like, why?
03:58What motivates you to be,
so then they told me
04:02about the job that they were doing,
that they were manual scavengers.
04:04They will go home to home, pick up human
excreta, keep it upon their heads and
04:09>> They used to be manual scavengers who
scraped the feces with their bare hands.
04:13So, in that profession, you can just
imagine there is no dignity and for
04:18livelihood, they need to struggle a lot.
04:20>> They said that no one ever
gave them another option to work,
04:24they had to do this.
04:25And even their children
will have to get into this.
04:28And when they started working with us,
first of all, they don't have to go to
04:32home to home, they just have to come
to a single workplace, that's one.
04:35Second, they felt good about themselves,
that they're working
04:38with temple flowers and they felt that
they're helping doing some god's work.
04:42And they'll help clean the river
Ganges which is a goddess
04:49We'll be able to do around 7200 woman.
04:51But I've taken set that goal of 5000, but
04:54I believe this change will not
happen in this generation.
04:57It will happen in the next generation
when the kids of the woman
05:00that we're able to employ
start going to school.
05:02The next generation will be
liberated from scavenging.
05:06Seed has been that pushing,
05:09that has helped us understand the
different processes, different systems and
05:15how the company can be managed in a better
way so that we can get our full potential.
05:20The communication gap that
was there is being a bridge.
05:23Everyone knows what the company is
doing and what is in it for them.
05:27>> We all share a common intent.
05:29We share a common intent of flowers
cycling, we share a common intent of women
05:34employment, we share common
views about the society and
05:37that is why all of us are working
together to achieve a goal.
05:41We all want to see it flourish.
05:44>> The seed a raise,
05:46we almost be seven times of the revenue
that we're doing as a factories come up.
05:51They already secured orders from biggest
household brand names in the country for
05:57our chloroform packaging.
06:00So now we're just waiting for
the factories to be set up and
06:07Problems will only be solved if they can
solve themselves, if they are sustainable.
06:12If solving the problem can
bring you money, then more and
06:15more people will get into this thing,
right?
06:18Only then the problem will be solved,
many people, many times people ask me,
06:22like, don't you feel that
this person is doing,
06:25is trying to replicate your model and
do you feel the threat?
06:28I always say, see the problem so huge.
06:31You need at least 10,000 people
like me to solve this problem.
06:35I think that's the equation
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