It started, as many good startups do, with a small personal frustration.
Jinali Mody wanted a leather bag she could feel good about buying.
What she found was an industry caught in a bind: animal leather with its heavy environmental toll, or vegan alternatives that were often just plastic in a green costume.
So she built her own.
The result is Banofi, a name stitched together from banana and fibre, a climate-tech startup converting one of India's most abundant agricultural waste streams into a material that looks, feels, and even smells like traditional leather.
