It has been a long and tiring day for Naveen, 30, who has just finished loading the last of his flower parcels for the day — the famous Udupi mallige (jasmine) — on a Bengaluru-bound bus. “This season has not been particularly profitable as we have had poor rains and it has been unusually hot,” says Naveen, from Brahmavara taluk in Karnataka’s Udupi district. This is perfect weather for this variety of jasmine. But it also means a larger-than-usual supply of flowers, and a dip in their rates.
The flowers usually fetch around ₹2,000 per atte (a bunch of over 3,000 buds) during this time. But the Udupi Mallige app, developed in 2019, will tell you that the average rate since the last week of August has been hovering around just ₹550-₹600.
