ZnO nanorods have been synthesized on indium doped tin oxide (ITO) glass substrate coated with sol gel based ZnO seed layer through chemical bath deposition method using various deposition times 4, 6, 8 and 10 h. X-ray diffraction result shows that ZnO nanorods exhibit hexagonal structure. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images reveals the presence of uniformly distributed hexagonal ZnO nanorods with average diameter varying from 100 to 200 nm. ZnO nanorods have been used as photoelectrode materials to fabricate the dye sensitized solar cells. Dye sensitized solar cells have been assembled by using ZnO nanorod film photoelectrode sensitized using natural dye extracted from rosa centifolia. The dye sensitized solar cells based on ZnO nanorods shows maximum photoelectric conversion efficiency of 0.76%. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.