Hyderabad-based Recykal plans hyperlocal processing units

Hyderabad: Recykal, a Hyderabad headquartered waste commerce company, has drawn up plans to add paper, battery and tyre waste to the list of products it channelises to recyclers apart from strengthening its technology, said Abhishek Despanade, its co-founder. The company has recently raised $ 22 million (about Rs 162.8 crore). “We will use these funds […]

Hyderabad: Recykal, a Hyderabad headquartered waste commerce company, has drawn up plans to add paper, battery and tyre waste to the list of products it channelises to recyclers apart from strengthening its technology, said Abhishek Despanade, its co-founder.
The company has recently raised $ 22 million (about Rs 162.8 crore).

“We will use these funds to strengthen our technology team. We are a technology first organisation even as we embark on expanding our B2B operations across the country. Recykal has been strong in plastic, e-waste and other segments. Now, we will look to expand the B2B operations by adding paper, metal, battery, battery and tyre waste to our business,” said Deshpande.

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As part of the pan-India plans, Recykal wants to build hyperlocal waste processing units. “Waste needs to be processed locally. A centralised processing unit will not work as that will increase the logistics costs. Waste normally should not be taken more than 15 miles. This will majorly impact the transportation costs,” he said without quantifying how many processing units it would set up. The plans, however, would further depend on how Covid pandemic spreads out in the year, he said.

It will mainly focus on dry waste and has no plans to add municipal or industrial waste. In terms of employment, the company now has about 180 people and wants to take past 350 by the end of next financial year. “Telangana is our home and we want everything to start from here. We want to expand, recruit and grow from here. Right now, Hyderabad and the surrounding places are the major locations where waste is collected from. In the next phase, we want to make sure that every small city in the State is covered for waste collection. The company wants to capture Telangana first before going deeper in other States,” Deshpande said.

On the industry changes happening, he said peoples’ perception about waste generation and management is changing in favour of circular economy (reduce, reuse and recycle). Covid has also forced people to look at circular economy and climate change concepts seriously, he said adding that Recykal so far has channelised 2,00,000 tonne dry waste through its platform back into the circular economy and away from landfills and water bodies by digitally connecting more than 100 brands, 1,000 corporates, 150 recyclers, 80 Government agencies across all States on one platform.

Recykal, founded in 2016, provides of cloud-based solutions to facilitate transparent and traceable material flows in waste. Introduction of regulations such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) has imposed a high compliance requirement for brand owners. In this direction, Recykal works with many consumer brands to assist them in implementing sustainability solutions in India.

“Any marketplace cannot be run without an efficient logistics. We have partnerships and will continue that. There is no need to have a own fleet. There are many micro-enterpreneurs and truck operators and we will collaborate with them,” he said.

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