I wanted to do something meaningful for the planet, against animal cruelty, and to show what a woman can build from the ground up.” – Manisha Jasani, Co-founder, Leafy Leather

A Fashion Designer Who Saw What Others Ignored

Manisha built her career as a fashion designer in Surat, one of India’s most important textile cities, home to thousands of fabric manufacturers, designers, and garment exporters. She loved the craft. But over the years, something began to trouble her deeply.

Real cotton, the fabric that had defined Indian textiles for centuries was quietly disappearing from fashion. In its place came polyester, nylon, and other plastic- based synthetics. Cheaper to produce, easier to manipulate, and endlessly marketable. But with a hidden cost: when fashion moves on, as it always does, these plastic fabrics go to landfill. And unlike natural fibers, they do not break down. They sit there for decades, for centuries.

For Manisha, this was not an abstract environmental concern. She saw it in her own work, in the materials she was asked to use, in the waste piling up around the industry she loved. And she knew that leather, one of fashion’s most used materials, carried its own set of deeply troubling realities: animal cruelty, toxic tanning chemicals, and an environmental footprint that the industry rarely spoke about honestly.

The Decision to Build Something Different

Manisha did not want to simply talk about these problems. She wanted to solve them. She envisioned a material that was genuinely natural, genuinely biodegradable, and genuinely cruelty-free, one that could hold its own in the fashion industry without compromise.

As a woman founder, she also wanted to show that a women-led business could drive real innovation in manufacturing — building something tangible, technical, and globally relevant.

She partnered with co-founder Ashish, who has over 10 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, whose scientific rigor and process expertise helped turn the vision into a manufacturable reality. Together, they identified India’s most abundant and most wasted agricultural by-products, corn husk and banana stem as the raw material for a new kind of leather. India is the world’s largest banana producer. Corn husk is discarded in enormous volumes every harvest season. Both were sitting in fields, unused, waiting.

Building It with Her Own Hands

Manisha had no chemistry background. What she had was determination, a fashion designer’s instinct for material quality, and an absolute refusal to give up.

She was present at every trial at the research facility travelling back and forth, watching experiments fail, taking notes, asking questions, absorbing the process until she understood it as well as any chemist. When the first samples came out looking more like cardboard than leather, she kept going. When finishing vendors refused to work on plant-based material, calling it “disrespectful to leather” she found partners who would. When machinery had to be custom-built because nothing off- the-shelf existed, she oversaw it.

Today, Manisha runs the manufacturing plant in Surat personally. She oversees the production of every sheet of corn husk and banana stem leather that leaves the facility. The woman who started as a fashion designer now understands the chemistry, the machinery, and the manufacturing process behind one of India’s most innovative sustainable materials.

What Leafy Leather Is Today

Leafy Leather Pvt. Ltd. is India’s dedicated B2B market access point for plant-based leather. The material is over 90% bio-based, completely free from animal products and chromium, and sourced entirely from Indian agricultural waste. In look, feel, and performance, industry partners now say they cannot tell it apart from conventional leather.

Leafy Leather is currently in active discussions with potential clients — manufacturers, designers, and brands, who are trialing the material and evaluating it for use in products such as wallets, handbags, laptop bags, and footwear. The team is also exploring partnerships with manufacturers across these product categories to build out a full production and supply chain. It is an early and exciting stage, with strong interest from the market.