Growing up in India, Jinali Mody ’23 M.E.M. was struck by the environmental impact of the country’s fashion industry. India is, for instance, a major producer of the world’s leather, a resource-intensive and highly polluting material.
At the same time, she noticed that vegan leather alternatives — including products made from PVC plastic or polyurethane — aren’t exactly sustainable either. In fact, like most plastics those alternatives are derived from the petrochemical sector and will never biodegrade.
Mody thought there had to be a better way — and she eventually found it.
Mody, 28, is now helping to redefine how we think about waste, sustainability, and fashion through her company Banofi Leather, which makes plant-based leather from banana crop waste. The material, she says, is vegan, does not harm animals, and uses 90% less water and has 90% lower carbon emissions than leather produced from animals.
On Tuesday she was one of three young entrepreneurs to win a 2025 Young Champions of the Earth award from the UN Environment Programme and American cleantech CEO Chris Kemper at an event during Climate Week in New York. Award recipients will receive seed funding, mentoring, communications support, and a global platform to showcase and scale their solutions.
Each Young Champions winner received a $20,000 prize at Tuesday’s event. And today the three will have an opportunity to compete in the first-ever Planet A pitch competition for a business growth grant of $100,000 and a possible seed investment of $1 million committed to a future fundraising round. Kemper, founder and CEO of the U.S. climate tech company Palmetto, this year co-founded Planet A, a YouTube channel that drives environmental awareness and action.
The other award recipients are Joseph Nguthiru, 27, a climate-tech engineer from Kenya whose company, HyaPak, converts the invasive species hyacinth in Lake Naivasha into packaging bags and biodegradable seedling wrappers, and Noemi Florea, 24, who founded Cycleau, a compact water reuse system, in consultation with dozens of marginalized communities. She is from Maryland.
Jinali Mody already had her nascent idea of creating a sustainable, plant-based leather alternative before she arrived at the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) in 2021 after working several years at McKinsey & Company.
And at Yale, where she enrolled in YSE’s Master of Environmental Management program, she found a vibrant culture of entrepreneurship, not to mention mentorship and support, that helped her turn that vision into a viable business. (Banofi was established in 2022.)
“Yale gave me the mindset, community, and tools to take the leap into entrepreneurship far earlier than I thought possible,” Mody said. “It helped me see myself not just as a student but as a founder, and that shift in identity has made all the difference.”
Mody
At the start of that journey, Mody found herself at the intersection of two industries with waste problems: leather and agriculture.
The leather industry results in excessive carbon emissions, immense water usage, and the production of toxic waste as a byproduct of the tanning process. That toxic waste is dumped into wastewater, polluting many rivers, especially in India. In addition to the problems within the leather industry, India generates about 350 million tons of agricultural waste every year, according to recent research.
Mody’s idea, which she turned into a business in 2021, would address both waste problems. And in April 2022, she decided to pitch it during Startup Yale, a campus event that convenes the university’s top student entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and investors for a series of pitch competitions, workshops, and discussions.
Her pitch ended up winning the Sustainable Venture Prize, a $25,000 cash prize now known as the Planetary Solutions Prize, awarded to student-led for-profit ventures dedicated to advancing environmental sustainability.
“Startup Yale wasn’t just a competition, it was a transformational process,” Mody said. “It gave me the tools to clearly articulate the impact and potential of Banofi Leather, connected me with an amazing community of mentors and peers, and strengthened my belief that this venture could make a real difference.”
Indeed, Mody credits the startup culture at Yale, including the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY), for motivating her to pursue her passion for solving problems in the climate and sustainability space. Tsai CITY, she said, gave her the space and support to experiment, fail, iterate, and build.
Her startup journey was also shaped by the Yale Center for Business and the Environment (CBEY), which offered a powerful platform for climate innovation and impact-driven entrepreneurship, and the founders practicum course at Yale School of Management.
“This is Yale Planetary Solutions at work: turning knowledge into action through ventures like Banofi Leather that reimagine systems, spark entrepreneurship, and bring Yale innovation to the world to tackle planetary challenges,” said Julie Zimmerman, Yale’s vice provost for planetary solutions.
After winning the prize at Startup Yale, Mody returned to India and got her new company off the ground. She and her team researched various plant-based options for their leather, including testing out waste from mangoes and wheat. Eventually, they settled on banana stems because of their high nutrient content and versatility.
And in India, there was an ample supply. India is the world’s largest producer of bananas, producing more then 25% of the fruit globally and generating 120 million tons of waste annually. According to Mody, the country generates four tons of waste for every one ton of the fruit. Much of that crop waste — primarily the stems — get dumped or burned.
In that waste, Mody saw an opportunity. The banana stem, in particular, was an untapped and abundant raw material source, she figured. Bananas don’t grow from the same stalk twice. The stems, which are the bulk of the crop, are dumped after every harvest.
Mody and her team would convert that waste into Banofi, a banana-fiber leather. The leather looks and feels like traditional leather.
Since its launch, Banofi Leather has won the Hult Prize, the largest student entrepreneurship competition globally, which came $1 million prize and global visibility. The company has also piloted with more than 150 brands across fashion, lifestyle, and automotive sectors, including getting a recent grant from Mercedes-Benz, as well as serves as the official stationery partner for Yale and other major universities.
On top of that, Banofi Leather has helped more than 100 small-scale farmers in India create new income streams and livelihoods. According to Mody, one of the company’s earliest farmer partners in West Bengal used to see banana stems as a burden, something to be discarded or burned just to clear the fields. After working with Banofi Leather, he began earning extra income by selling what was once considered waste.
“What moved me most was when he proudly told his community that the byproducts from his farm were now being used to make handbags, accessories, and shoes,” Mody said. “That sense of pride, seeing his work tied to global fashion perfectly captures what Banofi stands for: turning overlooked materials and people into powerful contributors to a more sustainable future.”
