It began with a gift…
By that time, I had a girlfriend in Delhi, so I went to visit her on her birthday. At Defence Colony, I ordered a bouquet of flowers to be sent to her. When I met her later, and saw the flowers at her place, I was shocked – they were so sad-looking. I went back to the florist and said I was not happy with the flowers at all. He was very rude to me and said we should have kept the flowers in an AC room, etc., etc. That’s when the entrepreneur in me woke up, and I said, ‘There seems to be an opportunity here because of his arrogance and unfriendly behaviour to a customer’. I stayed back in Delhi for a week and surveyed the flower market and weighed possibilities. Then I met a friend, and told him I was thinking of opening a flower shop in Delhi because Delhi needs a good customer-friendly florist. He liked the idea and proposed doing it together. He would invest in the flower shop and I would bring my experience of the business. That’s how Ferns N Petals was born.
A rapid growth curve…
We are growing fast. There was a time when we used to open one flower shop a month; now, we open seven each month. We have around 400 stores now, and if we keep going at the current speed, we will have 1,000 shops in three to four years. Overall, the size of business this year was around Rs 600 crore. We have a monopoly in offline selling of flowers. Online, there are a few players, but the gap between us and the second best is huge. During lockdown, our shops were shut but the online business picked up very well, compensating for the offline loss, as people never stopped sending flowers for occasions. Of course, our businesses in countries like Singapore and Dubai never paused.
The global aspiration…
FNP has expanded beyond India to Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Now we are heading towards Europe. We want to be everywhere. We want to be the Uber of gifting. The idea is to be a true multinational – anywhere in the world, just use our app and your flowers get delivered.
During the lockdown, we started something called ‘Last Journey’ – the first of its kind professional funeral service. Then there is FNP Pets; a new vertical that we’re about to launch. We will take care of everything from birth to burial of a pet, covering all product lines, all services – grooming, boarding, sports, pet insurance, vaccination, medication, training, trainers, pet cafes… We will get stray pets to our pet farm, and let people adopt them. We want to make this big. FNP Media is my personal project; I’ve always been creative and now with the OTT space booming, the opportunity is huge. We will make short films, web series, feature films and have our own OTT platform, going forward.
FNP Gardens remains a strong vertical, helping make dream wedding
experiences, with luxury to mid-range wedding venues. We organized 1300+ weddings until March 2020 and 80+ weddings during the pandemic.
The category needs help…
There are quite a few challenges before the flower retailing category. One, we do not have a good wholesale flower market like we do for vegetables or fruit. The Government will have to create that infrastructure for floriculture, where buying and selling of flowers can happen more professionally. Two, we need a cold chain. Flowers are grown in different parts of India, and to reach metro cities, they have to travel in trains, buses, trucks or flights. Especially for export, a cold chain is required to preserve quality and increase the shelf life of flowers. Three, it is still an unorganized market. We do not have qualified professionals to come and work in our shops. Formal education in floriculture will help grow the business. Four, the market is totally dominated by festivals and the wedding season. In the wedding season, flower prices are 10 times higher than the non-wedding season; the fluctuations are too high. I hope these issues get sorted out.
Source link