Rhea Karuturi & Yeshoda Karuturi

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Rhea is the Co-Founder of Rose Bazaar. Previously, she worked as a writer at the Times of India, Deccan Herald, the Stanford Daily and the Bay City Beacon among other publications. Rhea completed her studies at Stanford University (Stanford, USA) and graduated with a BSc. in Science, Technology and Society with a concentration in Communication and Media. 


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Yeshoda, along with her sister, is the Co-Founder of Rose Bazaar. Before launching her startup, she worked for Karuturi Global, once the world's largest producer of roses, as the

Executive director with a focus on the Company’s overseas operations. In her role,

she built a machinery rental business in Ethiopia with a focus on being able to create

effective controls for the business that was scalable and practical given technology constraints. Yeshoda has an MA and a BSc. in Business Administration from Washington University in St Louis (St. Louis, USA).


Their Company

Hoovu by Rose Bazaar offers packaged puja flowers, disrupting a $1.2 billion traditional flower market. By extending the shelf life from 2-3 days to 15 days and partnering with online and offline grocery platforms, the company eases the process of making fresh flowers available to everyone. Backed by TechStars, the company sells its offerings on Amazon and Big Bazaar. Rose Bazaar has been featured on Money Control, YourStory and Vamcast among others. 


Their Journey 

Raised on a floriculture farm, Rhea and Yeshoda grew up around conversations on harvest cycles, auction prices and freight rates. They saw how the industry changed from unorganised, fragmented markets to the setting up of the International Flower Auction Bangalore, the first exports of cut roses from Bangalore and the awe-inspiring Kenyan farm, which was the world’s largest rose farm. While first working in the cut flower industry, Rhea and Yeshoda saw first hand the enormous scalability in the industry. Realizing this opportunity, the two were able to partner with farms to reduce the turnaround time to 12-24 hours and extend shelf life from 2x to 5x, something unheard of in the current industry. Rhea and Yeshoda aim to do for puja flowers what they saw happen to cut flowers - a supply chain that works, that adds value to the farmer and the end customer.



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