Walk into enough offices in Gurgaon and you start seeing the same scene: a row of expensive planters near reception, half of them browning, one replaced by an artificial plant that fools nobody.
The usual explanation is that nobody watered them. That's rarely the real reason. More often the plant was wrong for the spot before it ever got there — a species that needs bright indirect light placed six metres from the nearest window, or one that hates dry air parked directly under an AC vent.
The three things that actually kill office plants
Light, measured honestly. Offices look bright to people because our eyes adjust. Plants don't care how bright it feels. A desk that seems well-lit can be far below what a fiddle-leaf fig needs to hold its leaves.
Air conditioning. Constant dry, moving air is brutal for most tropical foliage. The plant nearest the vent is almost always the first to go.
Nobody's job. Watering usually falls to whoever notices. That works for a month. It does not work for a year.
Why we lease instead of sell
Selling plants to an office means the failure is the buyer's problem. Leasing them means it's ours. If a plant dies on a lease, we replace it at our cost — which means we have every reason to get the species and placement right the first time, and to keep visiting.
It also means we find out, over time, which species survive in which kinds of spaces. A plant that repeatedly fails in west-facing open-plan floors stops getting recommended for them. That feedback loop doesn't exist when you sell once and walk away.
The free plant audit exists for the same reason. We'd rather tell you your lobby can support four plants than sell you twelve and replace eight.