Excl: E-waste management startup Karma Recycling secures seed funding from Safexpress' Rubal Jain & SPML Infra's Rishabh Sethi

Delhi-based Karma Recycling Pvt Ltd, an e-waste recycling company, has secured an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Rubal Jain, director-corporate strategy, at logistics services firm Safexpress and Rishabh Sethi, executive director of infrastructure development company SPML Infra.

Karma Recycling had closed this funding round in March this year, and the capital is being used to expand its business development team and also to improve its technology offering, its co-founder Akshat Ghiya said. A portion of the fund was used to set up its office in Delhi.

The company started its operations in April 2013, a month after it received the funding. The startup was founded by Ghiya and Aamir Jariwala. Ghiya holds a BA degree in Economics and International Relations from Northwestern University in the US. He has also founded Glazetech Industries, a manufacturer and supplier of innovative and green building materials and metal facade solutions. His partner Jariwala holds a degree in Industrial Engineering and Economics from Northwestern University. Prior to co-founding Karma Recycling, Jariwala served as the head of corporate strategy at SPML Infra Ltd. Earlier, he worked with Friend Skoler & Co., a middle-market private equity fund based in New York.

Karma recycles both corporate and household waste. For collecting e-waste from corporates, it does the basic segregation and sells the segregated waste to authorised recyclers whom it audits (quarterly) and gets proof of destruction from. Smartphones, tablets and laptops from households go through an inspection, repair and refurbishment process. The refreshed devices are then resold in the seconds-market as certified pre-owned electronics.

For households and individuals, the company offers an e-portal which allows them to trade in over 700 models of working and non-working smartphones, tablets or laptops (of leading manufacturers). They can find the items they want to sell from this list of 700 models and get an immediate quote. The company then contacts the user and collects the items for free. Then it inspects the items and pay cheques, gift cards or a new phone to the customer, based on various factors. Corporate customers pay on a case-to-case basis (it means, based on the type, quantum of waste and the locations from where it needs to be collected). The company is currently offering pickup in Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

"We have access to 580 warehouses and over 3,500 containerised trucks. We can provide our services to companies and their offices/factories. We have signed MoUs with 23 corporates from across India in the last six months of operation," Ghiya said.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)