Click here to join Express Pune WhatsApp channel and get a curated list of our stories
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Step into Aishwarya Vishwanath’s house in Pune’s Dhanori, and you will see more plants than you can count. For a long time, Aishwarya thought that her passion for plants was uncommon. But this year, she has discovered that Pune is full of kindred spirits—people quietly collecting plants with the passion of philatelists and nurturing them.
A qualified management accountant, Aishwarya is a serial entrepreneur who launched one of Pune’s first vegan cafes, The Real Green Cafe, and is an animal rescuer. While her current day job involves companies working with sustainability, her latest venture is a passion project inspired by one of her favourite plants–caladiums.
“There are a lot of varieties of caladium in India. I had been looking for more exotic varieties. There are two hubs for caladiums—Florida and Thailand. The varieties from these two places are different. The Thailand varieties are known to be resilient. They do not go into dormancy easily, and their foliage is different,” she says.
The tropical plants, native to South and Central America but naturalised to India and other countries, can brighten up the environment with their colourful, heart-shaped leaves. Among collectors in Pune, Aishwarya is fast becoming the go-to person to acquire exotic caladium varieties from Thailand.
“While I was searching, I found several caladium farmers in Thailand and connected with them. I started collecting directly from them, and soon I had around 150 varieties,” says Aishwarya. By August this year, other plant lovers became interested. Many of them wanted her to get caladiums and support small farmers in Thailand. “I started bringing these Thailand bulbs to India,” she says.
Her project is still at a nascent stage—she is still setting up shop—but her early successes have been encouraging. “I have fulfilled five or six group orders in the last couple of months, because there is a lot of demand here in India,” she says.
Aishwarya is now looking at bringing varieties of anthurium and begonias, among others, which are tropical in nature. “Thailand and India have a similar climate, which ensures that the plants will survive in our homes,” she says.
When she receives the bulbs, Aishwarya puts them in a moss box to sprout. “As soon as they sprout, I either sell them to people or move them into pots because there are a lot of people at different stages who do not know how to grow these bulbs. Some of them are beginners, so I sprout it for them and then send it across to them,” she says.
Now that she has realised that there are people who are collecting caladiums, “that is a very big driving force”, she says. Though Aishwarya would like the enterprise to grow organically, she says that her goal is to “have more green, colourful spaces in India”.
Housing societies and public spaces that showcase the beautiful plants from Thailand–that is the future she dreams for her passion project.
