Circular economy, next stop for start-ups: Expert

As sustainability campaigns gaining strength across the world, the start-ups can now look at tapping huge opportunities in the circular economy, which calls for reusing, recyling and refurbishing natural resources.

“In India, the opportunities in the circular economy are put at $500 billion in sectors like agriculture, food, beverages, metals, mining and electronics,” Abhay Deshpande, Founder of Recykal, has said.

Recykal offers digital solutions to the waste management and recycling ecosystem.

Addressing the Sustainability Summit organised by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) here on Tuesday, he said there was a huge scope for disruption in this space. “The circular economy is built on three principles of elimination of waste, pollution and regeneration of nature,” he said.

New customers

About three billion new consumers will enter the market in the next 20 years. Start-ups can come up with disruptive solutions to attract them. “It, however, is difficult to persuade consumers to spend on features that are environmentally and socially favourable,” he said.

He said the start-ups should look at developing designs that allowed repair and reuse of the products so that the pressure on the resources was reduced.

“New material doesn’t need to be used when you reuse and refurbish a product. Unlike in the past, there is a plenty of financial assistance available to fund start-ups that want to enter the space,” he said.

“No one has disrupted this space yet. You can come and disrupt it. There is a need to work on reverse logistics to build the ecosystem,” he said.

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