The Floral Queen: Anuja Joshi Anuja Joshi brought untrained florists on board and in 2017, started her journey in a small factory space in Mahim, Mumbai. Her aim was to revolutionize the luxury floral decor and gifting space.
By Punita Sabharwal •
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Being an educationist who set up and ran an IB school in Pune with 2000+ students for over 10 years, Anuja Joshi has always been an advocate of bringing the best global practices to the country. As she shares, "I quit my job and joined the family real estate business but felt the urge to push my boundaries further and achieve something bigger and better, out of my comfort zone." She was always intrigued by the sheer variety, size and shelf life of the flowers during her travels abroad and pondered over how she could be an enabler to getting a similar format to India. Thorough research and months of relentless brainstorming took her to Interflora - The Flower Experts. With a 100-year-old legacy of floral finesse, it was exploring the Indian market too. And that was her eureka moment. Sourcing flowers for personal use or gifting was a tremendous challenge. As Joshi says, "We researched and found out that the Indian flower market was worth $2 bn, however, it was fragmented and unorganized, with no branded player. At the start of the project, I realized that the entire supply chain was missing in India. There was a lack of quality flowers, the ones available were all exported and to add to the agony, the shelf life of flowers was just 2-3 days." She brought untrained florists on board and in 2017, started her journey in a small factory space in Mahim, Mumbai. Her aim was to revolutionize the luxury floral decor and gifting space.
I quit my job and joined the family real estate business but felt the urge to push my boundaries further and achieve something bigger and better, out of my comfort zone.
Over the years they have created some immaculate décor concepts for celebrities like Alia Bhatt & Ranbir Kapoor, Kiara Advani & Sidharth Malhotra, Richa Chadha & Ali Fazal. This love for customers only pushed them to grow two-fold and innovate. Be it creating a cold chain travel for preserving the blooms, using electric vehicles as an eco-friendly approach or mindfully crafting experiences instead of just products, Interflora pushes itself to be on top of the game. Talking about breaking the glass ceiling, she says, "When I started my journey, a lot of people were unsettled by my ambition. Some would even ask me to call my husband and consult him on the bigger decisions. To add to that I was a working mom.
A woman who had big dreams but also the responsibility of two kids. In fact, it was this straddling of two worlds that pushed me even harder to excel." Joshi worked in close quarters with over 200+ growers, identifying unexplored flower-growing regions and introducing new floral varieties in the country. All the while, developing a cold chain infrastructure for the welfare of every flower. The life of every floral waste is extended by creating various flower-infused products like candles, teas and more. At a group level they have raised over INR 300 crores (USD 37.5 million) till date from marquee global investors and family offices. With this, most of the capital has been invested in building technology and supply chain infrastructure. Fom 25 cities, Interflora aims to scale 40+ cities in India and worldwide too. To hone the craft, it is setting up florist training schools to give out better, stronger flower knowledge. And venturing into more tech-driven projects to add ease to customer experience. The business is currently doing an annualized run rate of INR 100 crores.
