Let’s Recycle, a waste management and recycling startup out of Ahmedabad, has now secured a $2 million Series B round, led by social venture fund Aavishkaar (via ET). With the freshly raised funds, the company is looking to expand its capacity, improve infrastructure and add more facilities for its service.
Sandeep Patel, founder and CEO of the company declined to comment on details of the deal but confirmed the newly raised funding round to the Economic Times .
Lets Recycle, which claims to be India’s largest waste management solution, aims to formalize the Indian unregulated and unorganised waste management sector by sourcing waste from the marginalized waste pickers, and ensuring long standing relationships by providing fair and transparent prices.
The company was founded in 2012 and plans strategies to bring in environmental solutions that can help the communities and organizations to become sustainable. Since its foundation, it has helped over 500 customers become greener.
However, what sets apart Lets Recycle from other, more social initiatives, is the blend of tech which they have brought into waste management. The startup has developed an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to track and monitor activities, to make the entire system more authentic and efficient. It is planning to divert 30000 MT of waste from the landfill by 2020, almost 1000 times of the 373 MT in 2012.
The firm provides its service to Govt. bodies, hospitality sector, corporate and industry sector, retail sectors, hospitals, townships, individual households, etc.
It currently has over 950 waste pickers in Ahmedabad who are trained to identify waste that fetches more value in the recycling market. They are also trained to handle hazardous waste like acid bottles, mobile batteries or hospital waste carefully.
As per a research by ASSOCHAM – cKinetics, value out of waste (VOW) is expected to touch $1.5 billion by 2017 in India from the current level of below Rs 6,300 crore ($1 billion).
