Read the full story from the BBC.
Piles of marigolds, roses, carnations and other flowers are left at temples, mosques and sikh gurudwaras for use in religious ceremonies.
Afterwards, the flowers can prove difficult to dispose of.
Tipping the discarded petals into flowing waters is one option, but this can add to the burdens for India’s often heavily polluted waterways.
Chemical engineer and eco-entrepreneur, Parimala Shivaprasad, thinks she has the solution.
The 26-year-old from Bangalore, currently a postgraduate student at the University of Bath, wants to turn the leftover flowers into a useful product.
Her big idea is to build a social enterprise that will enable temples in India to extract essential oils from the flowers.
The remains, she says, can be used as organic compost for growing vegetables to help feed the poor.