India, March 30 -- That ad about ordering a single rose on Blinkit? It tells an intriguing story.
It's a tale of a digital India, states awash in lucrative blossoms, growing new markets - and a booming, if relatively new, Indian flower industry.
The industrial flower complex in India is only about as old as liberalisation.
"We have an ancient bond with flowers, of course. But until the 1990s, the growing was limited to small patches, or the backyards of homes," says KV Prasad, head of the Directorate of Floricultural Research (DFR) of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Pune.
This was the source of garlands and wedding decoration, wreaths and pooja material.
Where they were not available in the volumes required, communi...