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How many times have you wondered what happens to your mobile phones or computers which you have returned due to the device developing a technical snag. Many a times, products returned by customers due to various cosmetic issues sit idle at the manufacturer’s warehouse and take away a lot of time and money. This is where Hitendra Chaturvedi saw an opportunity to do business and formed a company called GreenDust Pvt Ltd. The company provides the IT/PC manufacturers, distributors and retailers an alternate organized sales channel.
“I have worked overseas for 17 years across 65 countries and I have seen supply chain at various stages of evolution. Typical definition of supply chain ismovement of goods and service from manufacturer to consumer. But a true suply chain expert knows that this definition is half right,” says Chaturvedi.
Need for the business
According to him between 4 per cent and 40 per cent of products traverse a return journey. This reverse supply chain or reverse logistics is missed by many companies. India ranks third from the bottom when it comes to supply chain efficiencies. In countries where supply chain has evolved it is a best practice across retailers, e-tailers, and manufacturers to focus on forward while outsource reverse to companies that specialize in reverse logistics. Chaturvedi got the idea for GreenDust when he was part of the founding team of one such reverse logistics company in the US. “When I came to India and saw the dire need of an outsourced reverse logistics model I started the company,” he says.
GreenDust essentially enables retailers, e-tailers, and manufacturers to focus on their core competency of building great products and delivering them to their customers while outsourcing their reverse logistics process. It manages the entire process from customer pick-up, call center management of returns, warranty management, repair, refurbish, repack of returned items, and then resale as a refurbished items to end customer.
An engineer from IIT Roorkee, with an MS and MBA from the US, Chaturvedi spent 17 years in the US working for companies like Enst & Young, A.T Kearney, and Microsoft. He came to India in 2006 via Micorosft and when the time came to go back to the US he decided to take the entrepreneurial plunge and started RLC and its brand GreenDust in 2008.
India has a return rate of 5 per cent. This means that between $12-$15 billion worth of products get returned every year. While the opportunity looks big GreenDust had a huge challenge in educating business partners on the value of reverse supply chain and its strategic importance because reverse logistics has never been on the CXO’s agenda before. “Returns were the ‘orphans’ that lay in a warehouse in a corner gathering dust and loosing value. Educating companies that returns were not ‘fine wine’ took time but once they saw the value it was like a light bulb going off,” says Chaturvedi.
Uniqueness of the idea
The concept of refurbished products is very common in the automobile segment but GreenDust has brought this to IT and mobile devices wherein Indian customers get an alternative to buying new products. The refurbished products are authorized by the original manufacturer and comes with a warranty.
By bringing them back to life from the verge of being scrapped and bringing them lovingly back to just like new condistion and providing them a new home we have decreased the amount of pollutants that would gone into the environment,” says Chaturvedi. Till now GreenDust has stopped over 3,00,000 products from becoming scrap.
Funding of the venture
The company started with seed funding from Mumbai Angels followed by Series A funding from Kliener Perkins, Sherpalo Ventures and Reliance. Kliener Perkins, Sherpalo, and Vertex invested in the next round of funding. In three years the company has grown from Rs 1 crore to over Rs 300 crore with the number of employees going up from 3 to over 400.
Learnings
“As they say – if you have learned to drive in India you can drive anywhere in the world….I say if you know how to start and sustain a business in India you can do it anywhere in the world and be extremely successful,” says Chaturvedi. He believes that people and team will make or break any company. Build the best team possible and guide them, empower them, but do not control/constrict them. “Businesess have to prove their merit and slog hard to earn the trust of their business partners and customers,” he says.
GreenDust claims to be among the top reverse supply chain company in India today and it has global ambitions. “Our intent is to go international soon and become one of the few technology companies that were incubated in India and went onto become an MNC. The next goal is to become the #1 reverse logistics company for the emerging markets,” says Chaturvedi who has set a target of becoming a $1 billion company in 5 years.
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