What does it take to start afresh in your career? For 34-year-old Bharat Bansal, it was a strong sense of inspiration that he took from his own growing years in Delhi, watching the Yamuna River get increasingly polluted year after year. 

Flowers, once offered in religious institutions, become sacrosanct, and since time immemorial, the only way deemed suitable to dispose of them is by throwing them in holy rivers. Bharat, too, recalls throwing flowers into the river as a child. But it was only decades later that he realised how the pesticides and chemical fertilisers used to grow these flowers pollute the river water, making it highly toxic.

A CA dropout and lawyer by profession, Bharat quit his four-year-long career in 2020, and the same year co-founded Nirmalaya with his wife Surbhi and friend Rajiv. This Delhi-based social enterprise works with over 300 temples in the city to recycle floral waste into organic incense sticks and cones, and havan cups among others.

The trio kicked the business off with their collective savings of Rs 1.25 crore. Just last year, they clocked a revenue of Rs 2.6 crore. So far this year, they have earned Rs 7.5 crore, and project an annual revenue of Rs 20 crore by March 2024. With their startup, they recycle up to 500 tonnes of floral waste annually.

We sat down with Bharat, the CEO, and Rajiv, the chief operations officer, to understand what it takes to start a business of your own.

The story begins in 2019 when former real estate developer Rajiv visited the famous Sai Baba temple in Shirdi, where he saw the process of converting flower waste into incense products.

“A few women were segregating flowers offered to Sai Baba. I got curious. They told me how flowers are being used to make agarbattis (incense sticks). I went to their plant to understand the process and I learned about a pulverizer machine, which converts dry flowers into powder,” says Rajiv.

After coming back to Delhi, he discussed the idea with Bharat and Surbhi. Together, they started researching and contacting trustees of temples. At the time, Bharat was working in a consultancy firm as a company director. “My area of expertise has always been business development. It was a transition from a profit-making entity to building a startup which might involve losses in the beginning. I knew how to strategise things,” he says. “Setting up a business where we would ensure floral waste does not end up in rivers was a great opportunity for me to contribute towards the environment.”

He adds that when Rajiv........

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