InfinityBox Pvt Ltd, a reusable packaging platform for single-use plastic containers, has raised $800,000 (around Rs 6.6 crore) in a seed funding round led by Weh Ventures with participation from Nithin Kamath’s Rainmatter, Kolte Patil Family Office, Ankit Kedia of Capital A and Gaurav Thakkar of Rockstud Capital, a top executive told VCCircle.
“Single-use plastic waste is the biggest polluter of our rivers, oceans, and landfills, and a major source of greenhouse gases and global warming. While most of the plastic reduction or recycling initiatives are creating an impact, the problem is too huge and there’s a severe lack of infrastructure,” said Shashwat Gangwal, founder and Chief Executive of InfinityBox.
Infinity Box aims to address the problem of single-use plastic pollution by building India’s largest reusable packaging platform. In food delivery, they replace single-use plastic containers with reusable Tupperware quality containers of various sizes
Gangwal said that Zomato and Swiggy process almost 4 million orders per day, which translates into more than 30,000 tonnes of plastic waste per month. Most scrap pickers prefer other forms of plastic waste. This problem has only been exacerbated during the pandemic and continues to grow.
He added the boxes are stored at partner restaurants of the delivery service, and customers have an option to opt-in for reusable containers at no extra cost. If the customer opts in, the partner restaurant packs food in reusable containers and scans the QR codes on the containers. The food will be delivered by Swiggy/Zomato as it would have been earlier.
Infinity box collects the used containers from the customers at the designated time and these are washed using a multi-step lab-certified chemical washing process and sent back to the partner restaurants for re-use.
Founded by Gangwal and his co-founder Keshav Godala in 2020, in the early days, the operations were poorly affected during the pandemic but that enabled them to diversify and expand the operation into the B2B space as well. At present, the company has over 50 employees and operates in Bangalore and Mumbai.
Gangwal said the model can be used for restaurants, food delivery, subscription models, corporate campuses, universities, and hospitals.
