Bangalore to gear up for rose export to mark valentine day

Bangalore, Feb 12: Come Valentine's Day, roses are in full bloom in the garden city's misty environs yielding cash strapped farmer with good returns.

For this Valentine's Day too, the floriculturists are having a field day as their crop would be sent to various countries as was done every year.

Over 350 tonnes of rose, worth US Dollars eight million had already been despatched through chartered flights from Bangalore to various countries in Asia, Europe, Middle East, UK and Singapore to meet the demand for the festival of love. The flowers were in great demand that they could not send the loads to Portugal because of the shortfall.

Besides this, many BPO and IT companies have ordered roses for the Valentine's Day. The IT growth has also complimented the demand for roses in domestic market. "IT has brought in a big boom. This time, around 20 BPO's have allowed us to set up flower shops in their premises. We have also brought in a toll free number concept of booking flower orders not only for delivery in India but anywhere in the world. This is becoming highly popular," Karturi said adding that high profile weddings including that of Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai had created lot of space for roses thereby increasing domestic market consumption.

Mr Karturi said the design house set up in Bangalore, where rose was grown in over 200 hectares, would give bouquets to local dealers, retail outlets and other vendors. Under the current capacity the design house could make about 50,000 bouquets a day. He said the Rs 2000 crore export-industry was growing at the rate of 35 to 40 percent annually, and domestic demand was growing at over 300 per cent.

He said on the export front, India had seen a year-on-year growth of about 38-40 percent.
"On an average, an aircraft can take about 28 tonnes. The turnover from this would be around 7.8 million dollars. The rose that normally sells for Rs 10 was being sold at Rs 40 or US 50 cents," he explained.

Rose exports from Bangalore rose to over 1800 tonnes from 1500 tonnes last year, a new record. The domestic market for roses and cut flowers was worth Rupees 1500 crore, up from just Rs 250 to Rs 300 crores a few years ago.

The Indian domestic market is growing at a high rate. On average, "we sell about two million stems domestically, which is expected to go upto 25 million stems in the coming years," he said.

UNI