What is Banana-Based Leather - The story behind Banofi®!

It started with Jinali

Jinali Mody grew up in India and came to materials innovation from a rather unexpected mix of disciplines.

She studied biochemistry at St. Xavier's College in Mumbai, worked in consulting at McKinsey & Company, and later pursued a master's at the Yale School of the Environment.

It began with a problem.

Jinali couldn't find a sustainable bag she wanted to buy.

As she looked deeper into the alternatives available, she found herself caught between two familiar choices: traditional animal leather, and “vegan” alternatives that were often made from plastic.

The more she looked, the more she realised that the real gap wasn't just in the products.

It was in the materials.

So she started exploring what else could be possible. That search eventually led her to banana crop waste.

And that's when a much bigger question emerged:

What if agricultural waste could become something entirely new?

The idea behind Banofi®

India is the world's largest producer of bananas. Once a banana plant has produced its fruit, its stem is cut down to make way for a new plant.

The stem contains cellulose-rich fibres, but was largely treated as agricultural waste.

For Jinali, it presented an opportunity.

Could those fibres be extracted and transformed into a material that could actually be used in fashion?

That question became the starting point for Banofi - a name derived from banana and fibre.

What followed was years of experimentation to turn an agricultural by-product into a material that could be used in products people would actually want to carry, wear and use.

From a Yale pitch to Banofi

Jinali first pitched an early version of the idea at Startup Yale in April 2022.

She won the $25,000 Sustainable Venture Prize, which helped fund the initial development of Banofi.

Then in 2023 Banofi won the $1 million Hult Prize, selected from a global pool of more than 40,000 students.

The award was presented in Paris by Stella McCartney, with Jinali accepting alongside early team members Maggie Boreham and Isobel Campbell.

That same year, Banofi also won the $30,000 Wege Prize, a global competition focused on circularity.

An idea that started with a search for a better bag had become a material innovation company attracting attention around the world.

From waste to income

The Banofi story doesn't stop at the material itself.

The company also began looking at what happened before the fibre reached them.

For banana farmers, the stem was something that needed to be cleared after the crop was harvested. Banofi began working with farmers to collect these stems and create an additional source of income from something that previously had little commercial value.

The company says it has helped more than 100 small-scale farmers in India create new income streams.

So the material's journey starts much earlier than the factory.

It starts on the farm. The plant is cut. The stem, once considered waste, becomes a source of fibre.

And that fibre becomes the starting point for something new.

Making of the Material 

Turning banana fibre into a material suitable for fashion isn't as simple as extracting a fibre and stitching it onto a bag.

The team had to figure out how to process the fibres, combine them with other components and engineer them into sheets with the characteristics needed for different applications.

The early material gave a finish of leather goods. The team then developed a version of products, opening up applications across fashion, accessories and other categories.

Banofi has since been piloted with more than 150 brands across fashion, lifestyle and automotive, and has received a grant from Mercedes-Benz.

Why did Alma choose Banofi®?

When we started developing Alma, Banofi wasn't the only material we explored.

We experimented with apple leather and grape leather for some of our early prototypes, testing how different plant-based materials looked, felt and behaved when turned into a bag.

We didn't want to choose a material simply because it sounded interesting.

We wanted to understand and use it before we went ahead with a launch. 

How does the material feel?
How does it hold structure?
What are the challenges during construction?

Banofi ticked all our requirements. 

We were drawn to the fact that this wasn't simply another material created to imitate leather.

As we worked with the Banofi team and experimented with the material ourselves, that trust grew.

And for us, Banofi became the right place to begin.

From banana fibre to Alma.

That's the story behind our material.