Start-up solutions from Bengaluru for a sustainable circular future Premium

From reusable packaging materials to recycling batteries to refurbished products, circular economy start-ups try to find a business model that is profitable and, at the same time, kinder to the planet.

Shashwat Gangwal and Keshav Godala used to order in food frequently as IIT-Kharagpur students. “The mess food wasn’t great,” Gangwal remembers. “And Swiggy and Zomato were just entering our campus.” 

While food delivery made life better for these friends, disposable plastic containers piled up on the side. The duo didn’t pay much attention to it until one day they came across the containers being burned emitting toxic fumes and exposing people to the same. 

Mr. Gangwal and Mr. Godala realised that burning or being sent to a landfill was the way such waste was dealt with most of the time. Plastic containers were rarely picked up by waste pickers as recycling them didn’t make economic sense.   

Meanwhile, the food delivery volumes were only growing, running into millions every day and producing an equivalent amount of plastic waste. 

Mr. Gangwal and Mr. Godala attempted to solve this, and the result was InfinityBox, a Bengaluru-based packaging-as-a-service start-up which offers reusable containers as an alternative option for food delivery.  

InfinityBox is one of the emerging crop of startups in Bengaluru shaping their model around circular economy.

The circular economy concept essentially talks about practices that encourage reuse, recycling, and refurbishing instead of disposing off resources and products.