‘Knowledge into action’: Yale-trained entrepreneur named amongst UN’s ‘Young Champions of the Earth’

At the beginning of that journey, Mody discovered herself on the intersection of two industries with waste issues: leather-based and agriculture. 

The leather-based business ends in extreme carbon emissions, immense water utilization, and the manufacturing of poisonous waste as a byproduct of the tanning course of. That poisonous waste is dumped into wastewater, polluting many rivers, particularly in India. In addition to the issues inside the leather-based business, India generates about 350 million tons of agricultural waste yearly, in line with current analysis.

Mody’s concept, which she was a enterprise in 2021, would deal with each waste issues. And in April 2022, she determined to pitch it throughout Startup Yale, a campus occasion that convenes the college’s prime pupil entrepreneurs, business leaders, and buyers for a collection of pitch competitions, workshops, and discussions. 

Her pitch ended up profitable the Sustainable Venture Prize, a $25,000 money prize now referred to as the Planetary Solutions Prize, awarded to student-led for-profit ventures devoted to advancing environmental sustainability. 

“Startup Yale wasn’t just a competition, it was a transformational process,” Mody mentioned. “It gave me the tools to clearly articulate the impact and potential of Banofi Leather, connected me with an amazing community of mentors and peers, and strengthened my belief that this venture could make a real difference.”

Indeed, Mody credit the startup tradition at Yale, together with the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY), for motivating her to pursue her ardour for fixing issues within the local weather and sustainability area. Tsai CITY, she mentioned, gave her the area and assist to experiment, fail, iterate, and construct.

Her startup journey was additionally formed by the Yale Center for Business and the Environment (CBEY), which supplied a strong platform for local weather innovation and impact-driven entrepreneurship, and the founders practicum course at Yale School of Management. 

“This is Yale Planetary Solutions at work: turning knowledge into action through ventures like Banofi Leather that reimagine systems, spark entrepreneurship, and bring Yale innovation to the world to tackle planetary challenges,” mentioned Julie Zimmerman, Yale’s vice provost for planetary options.

After profitable the prize at Startup Yale, Mody returned to India and obtained her new firm off the bottom. She and her staff researched varied plant-based choices for his or her leather-based, together with testing out waste from mangoes and wheat. Eventually, they settled on banana stems due to their excessive nutrient content material and versatility.

And in India, there was an ample provide. India is the world’s largest producer of bananas, producing extra then 25% of the fruit globally and producing 120 million tons of waste yearly. According to Mody, the nation generates four tons of waste for every one ton of the fruit. Much of that crop waste — primarily the stems — get dumped or burned.

In that waste, Mody noticed a possibility. The banana stem, specifically, was an untapped and plentiful uncooked materials supply, she figured. Bananas don’t develop from the identical stalk twice. The stems, that are the majority of the crop, are dumped after each harvest.