Whalesbook
Circular economy startup Karo Sambhav has secured ₹56 crore from Rainmatter by Zerodha. The funding aims to expand infrastructure for recovering critical minerals—like lithium, cobalt, and nickel—from e-waste, a move that supports India's growing battery and electronics manufacturing sectors.
What Happened
Gurugram-based recycling startup Karo Sambhav has raised ₹56 crore in a Pre-Series A funding round. The investment was led by Rainmatter, the investment arm of Zerodha. Karo Sambhav focuses on circular economy solutions, which means keeping materials in use for as long as possible rather than discarding them. The company plans to use this capital to build advanced recycling infrastructure, specifically designed to extract high-value materials from electronic waste.
Why Critical Minerals Matter
India is the world's third-largest producer of electronic waste, generating over 4 million metric tonnes annually. Historically, much of this waste has been processed by the unorganized sector, where material recovery is often inefficient or environmentally unsafe. However, modern electronics and electric vehicle (EV) batteries require specific 'critical minerals' like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper.
As India pushes to become a major hub for battery manufacturing and electronics, securing these materials is a national priority. By recovering these minerals domestically from e-waste—a process often called 'urban mining'—companies like Karo Sambhav aim to reduce India's heavy reliance on imported raw materials. This strategic focus is aligned with the National Critical Minerals Mission, and the company has already secured eligibility status for government incentives aimed at promoting this type of recycling.
Building on a Nine-Year Track Record
Unlike many startups that scale quickly with venture funding, Karo Sambhav has operated as a bootstrapped business for nine years. This means the company relied on its own revenue and profits to grow before seeking external investment. Currently, it manages a collection network across 50 cities in India and has processed over 150,000 metric tonnes of waste. Investors often monitor such track records, as it demonstrates that the business has a working model for collecting and processing waste at scale before expanding into more complex material recovery.
The Operational Challenge
While the goal of recovering critical minerals is highly strategic, the recycling sector in India faces significant challenges. One of the biggest hurdles is the informal market, which collects a vast majority of the country's e-waste. Formal recyclers like Karo Sambhav must compete with these informal networks for supply. Additionally, extracting high-purity minerals from complex devices requires advanced technology and significant capital spending on machinery. There is always a risk that if the cost of advanced recycling technology is too high or if the supply of e-waste is inconsistent, the profitability of such projects could come under pressure.
What Investors Should Track
For investors following the green energy and recycling sectors, this development highlights the growing importance of the circular economy. The next important updates will be the timeline for commissioning this new recycling infrastructure and how successfully the company can increase its volume of processed e-waste. Investors may also watch whether the company can maintain its operational discipline as it moves from being a bootstrapped entity to one using external capital for rapid expansion. Finally, tracking government policy updates under the National Critical Minerals Mission will be key, as future regulatory support or incentives could significantly change the economics of the critical mineral recycling business.
