Wool without sheep? In Puducherry, a wild shrub offers material gains

Gowri Shankar, a fashion entrepreneur, is using fibre from a giant shrub to make yarn for soft, warm winter wear.

Gowri Shankar, 34, is probably the only fashion entrepreneur in the world with a side business in fertiliser. For three years, he’s been producing a yarn using fibre extracted from a giant shrub, the calotropis gigantea.

The pods of this plant yield the fibres for Weganool (Shankar’s name for his plant-based alternative to wool). The residue from the process is used to make a natural fertiliser and insect repellent named Arka (the Sanskrit name for the plant).

Shankar discovered the plant quite by accident, growing wild around his ancestral home in Kuilapalayam, Puducherry. At the time, in 2017, he was a fashion merchandising consultant and had also set up a company two years earlier called Faborg, that was studying how to make fibres from banana and hemp more sustainably. Shankar also comes from a long line of Devanga weavers, the community that produces the hand-woven Kanchipuram silk sari.

Gowri Shankar and his wife Elen at their Puducherry home. (Photo courtesy Gowri Shankar)

“It was a hot summer day. The plants were wilting. I noticed many sunbirds around a particular flowering shrub. Going closer, I found the birds yanking out a yarn-like substance from the shrub. They were using it to line their nests,” he says. “When I saw the hollow cellulose fibres, so much like wool, I realised it had potential.”

The calotropis grows as a weed in coastal areas. “It’s everywhere,” Shankar says. So he began to collect the fibres and experiment with methods of processing them without using chemicals.

A few months later, he hired and trained five local women, and opened an extraction and weaving unit.

“Since the calotropis requires no water or fertiliser, our production system is very eco-friendly,” Shankar says. The Weganool yarn, he adds, is 5% calotropis gigantea pod fibres, 25% fibres from the stem of the plant, and 70% organic cotton. The cloth woven with this yarn is soft, offers good insulation.

So far, Shankar has had some inquiries and one taker for it. Infantium Victoria, a German luxury kidswear company, launched a Weganool hoodie, cape dress and jacket this year. The items are retailing online at prices ranging from 150 Euro to 575 Euro (or ₹12,000 to ₹50,000).

“To scale up Weganool production is the next challenge,” he adds. “We are set to begin systematic cultivation this year, across 30 acres on a neighbouring farm.”

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