Story & Mission:

Our mission is to protect our only planet by creating sustainable alternatives to the materials of today. So, we dedicated ourselves to creating Banofi, which looks, feels, and smells like traditional leather but is vegan, sustainable, and made from upcycled crop waste.

The leather industry results in excessive carbon emissions, immense water usage, and the production of toxic waste as a byproduct of the tanning process. The second issue we aim to tackle is the escalating crop waste in India. As the world’s largest producer of bananas, India generates 4 tons of waste for every 1 ton of fruit, much of which is dumped.

We source our banana crop waste solely from smallholder farmers, where this waste is not utilised. These farmers are the core of our business, providing us with the main ingredient for our process. By providing farmers with additional income for their crop waste, we at Banofi are disincentivizing crop burning practices and boosting household incomes by 30%. Women are core to the work we do at Banofi with 60% of our team being composed of women