Empowering Bengaluru’s circular future: new grant backs eight local ventures
Bengaluru, one of the world’s fastest-growing cities, generates over 5,000 tons of municipal waste daily. Despite strong citizen activism, waste continues to spill into highways and into surrounding villages. So far, innovation has focused on downstream activities such as recycling — a vital component of waste management. However, this only addresses one component of the comprehensive circular economy principles.
To truly address the scale of the crisis, the city must embrace upstream innovation, which focuses on preventing waste from being created rather than managing it post-use. This means prioritising redesign, reduction and elimination of waste at the source.
Building a circular future
To advance this upstream approach, Climate KIC and SecondMuse are nurturing Circular Economy Innovation Clusters in Bengaluru—dynamic, interconnected groups working together to create systemic solutions that prevent waste at its source. Supported by the IKEA Foundation, these clusters activate local entrepreneurship by bringing together start-ups, policymakers, investors and businesses while including marginalised communities whose skills and knowledge are often ignored in formal systems.
Within this framework, the newly launched Circular Economy Catalytic Grant Facility programme provides direct support to innovators developing breakthrough solutions for waste prevention. This collaborative ecosystem builds a diverse portfolio of innovative activities designed to address key barriers to creating a truly circular economy in Bengaluru.
Catalysing change through equity-free grants
Early-stage ventures often struggle to access capital, limiting their ability to scale. The Catalytic Grant Facility programme aims to change that. Alongside funding, we help to connect these ventures with local industry and ecosystem stakeholders to facilitate potential synergies.
Launched in March 2025, the programme will support eight ventures with up to $18,000 each in equity-free, milestone-based funding. These ventures will also receive technical support, climate impact guidance and access to a network of experts within the circular economy ecosystem to help scale their innovations.
The programme focuses on three key goals -
- Improve traceability in waste management
- Optimise recycling, particularly in textiles
- Prevent waste generation at source
The project prioritises social inclusion. It brings informal workers and excluded communities into the circular economy value chain. Ventures are selected through recommendations from local Entrepreneurship Support Organisations (ESOs) and partners, ensuring a diverse and impactful pool of candidates.
Meet the transformative eight
From nearly 100 applicants, these eight ventures were chosen for their impactful and scalable solutions.
- Angirus – Sustainable alternatives to construction bricks and paver blocks.
- Ecorenowa – Improving solar panel recycling efficiency through on-site delamination.
- E-waste Social – Digital waste management and traceability platform for e-waste.
- Green Aadhaar – SaaS platform for end-to-end waste management and traceability.
- Green Goobe – Provides non-toxic, environmentally safe cleaning products in reused packaging.
- Kosha AI – AI-driven solutions for improved textile waste recycling efficiency.
- Reverse – End-to-end, closed-loop system for reuse of glass and rigid plastic packaging containers.
- UnWood – Sustainable alternatives to hardwood-based construction boards.
Their six-month implementation journey starts in May 2025, culminating in a showcase event later this year.
A waste-free vision for Bengaluru
In a true circular economy, products and materials are kept in circulation, waste and pollution are designed out from the beginning and natural systems are regenerated. These eight ventures are pioneering in this field in Bengaluru. Their work represents not just technological solutions, but a crucial shift in mindset: from seeing waste as an inevitable by product to recognising it as a design flaw we can eliminate through innovation and collaboration.