These Sisters Are Revolutionising the Pooja Flower Industry with Hoovu Fresh

Coming from a family with a thriving flower business, sisters Rhea and Yeshoda Karuturi found their niche in bringing a subscription for pooja flowers.

Yashoda and Rhea Kayuturi’s father owns the biggest rose farm in the world. Growing up in a household that was running one of the biggest flower businesses, choosing the same path was obvious for the sisters. They chose to launch an online store, Rose Bazar in 2019 that caters for pooja flowers. They renamed it ‘Hoovu Fresh’ in mid-2020 and the business has been running successfully.

Rhea has a Bachelor in Science, Technology and Society from Stanford University and Yashoda has a Master’s in Accounting and B.S in Business Administration from Washington University in St. Louis, USA. After completing her studies she worked in the family business, handling overseas operations in East Africa.

They say that they realised the potential of this business knowing that the flower business in India is large, but that was not the case for pooja flowers. Pooja flowers are an essential part of Indian culture, but the industry has remained unchanged for the past few decades. Yashoda and Reha note that the pooja flower industry in India is four times the size of the bouquet flower industry and when they started researching their product, they instantly knew it was going to be a big hit.

Hoovu means flowers in Kannada and the sisters wanted their brand to be uniquely Indian. “When people think of pooja, they think about it in their mother tongues – and we felt Hoovu was a nice way to pay homage to tradition while staying fresh,” says the duo.

Since flowers are highly perishable, every minute from when they are picked to delivered is important. Hoovu says it has been able to increase its flowers’ shelf life from two-to-three days to 15 days. Hoovu has 50 flower SKUs ranging from loose flowers to intricate garlands to greens such as Durva grass that are used in pooja. The prices start from Rs 25 and go up to Rs 1000.

Credit: HerStory

-Staff Reporter