FAMO Connect started with just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill houseplant.
Mohsin Hundekar and his wife Farha were stuck at home during the early months of COVID-19 pandemic, and decided to spiff up their place with a few plants. And while they both enjoyed having plants around, they took a critical piece for granted: actually taking care of the things.
“We’d buy a plant and then go, ‘okay, now what?’” Mohsin says. “How much water does it need? How much sunlight? Is it supposed to look like this?”
Software engineers by trade, the couple was very accustomed to figuring out all sorts of problems at work. But gardening? That was another matter entirely.
So, as the horticulture questions kept piling up, the two eventually came to realize something: if they were having this much trouble with their own little menagerie of potted pets, then surely other folks were too.
That’s when they set out to try and come up with a solution not only for themselves, but for all the other struggling plant parents out there. The idea: an app that would not only identify a plant, but also teach you how to take care of it (no green thumb required).
They started small; just a few features at first. “We wanted to see if people would even use it before we put more energy into it,” Mohsin explains. And that’s how the first version of Plant Identifier debuted in 2021.
Almost immediately, the messages and reviews started to roll in.
“People would say things like, ‘I thought my plant was a goner, but your app helped me bring it back to life,’” Mohsin says. “Turns out, our app was helping real people out there, in a very real way.”
