New Waste Technologies Must Work alongside Informal Collectors Rather than Replace Them

Early-stage textile-waste businesses often face uncertain feedstock, inconsistent material quality and limited buyers for recovered outputs. Which of these constraints will the accelerator address directly, and which will remain the entrepreneur's responsibility?
Shruti Goel: It is helpful to distinguish between the general challenges of waste aggregation and the specific hurdles for the decomposition-focused innovators we are targeting. The accelerator is designed to systematically reduce the technical and ecosystem barriers that typically prevent a promising proof of concept from moving towards commercial deployment.

Direct Accelerator Support: We focus on reducing technical risk through The Biomimicry Institute, which provides specialised decomposition science and technical assistance. This is critical for determining whether a technology can reliably process India’s unique, often contaminated, textile waste streams under local climatic and infrastructural conditions. Upaya complements this with enterprise readiness support, catalytic capital, and strategic connections, including facilitating research partnerships with institutions like the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for specialised testing and validation.

Entrepreneur Responsibility: While we create the conditions for success, the underlying commercial test remains the responsibility of the entrepreneur. We cannot manufacture market demand; the enterprise must ultimately demonstrate that its technology works reliably at scale, that it can move towards a viable unit cost structure, and that the resulting output meets the performance and price requirements of a paying industrial customer.

The accelerator is intended to significantly lower the barriers to answering these questions, but the responsibility for proving a sustainable, market-driven business model remains the vital work of the entrepreneur.

What form of financial support will participating enterprises receive, and how will Upaya decide whether a business needs grants, debt, equity investment or assistance in raising outside capital?
Shruti Goel: Financing for the DJA x NoF cohort is precisely tailored to the early stage and significant risk profile inherent in decomposition technology development. Each of the five enterprises in the programme can receive up to $200,000 in catalytic capital. Because these innovations involve longer timelines and high technical uncertainty, we often structure this as high-risk funding, instead of applying a conventional commercial investment instrument to every venture.

Our decision on the specific financial structure depends on what the enterprise is attempting to achieve, be it technology adaptation, pilot development, or commercial readiness. We recognise that conventional commercial capital is often poorly suited to the gap between a promising technology and a validated product. To address this, we use Impact-Linked Finance (ILF) principles, which treat social and environmental impact as a measure of business performance.

Under this model, financial terms (such as interest rate reductions) are directly tied to the achievement of pre-defined, independently verified outcomes, such as the volume of textile waste diverted from landfills and the number of dignified jobs created. This impact-first approach allows us to absorb early risk, incentivising ‘impact champions’ to take on bolder missions. Ultimately, our goal is to provide the financial runway necessary for these enterprises to reach commercial self-sustainability and transition towards a permanent, sustainable capital structure.

Textile-waste processing can expose workers to dust, chemicals, sharp objects and repetitive manual labour. What occupational-health requirements will enterprises have to meet before receiving support through the accelerator?
Shruti Goel: The response must be grounded in the operational reality of the innovators we are supporting. Most enterprises that will be part of the DJA x NoF cohort will be at the technology-development or pilot stage, with few operating mature, labour-intensive processing plants. It would therefore be premature to impose the full occupational-health infrastructure of a scaled industrial operation on a small technology team.

However, our requirement is that worker safety be integrated into the design of the operating model from the very beginning. We treat safety as a non-negotiable pillar of a dignified job, and as these technologies move towards commercial deployment, we expect them to adopt the practical benchmarks used by our more mature partners in the Textile Waste Technical Assistance Facility (TAF). Some such measures include:

• Protective Measures: Mandatory use of appropriate gear, such as gloves, masks, and aprons.
• Health & Training: Routine health check-ups and specialised training for the safe handling of hazardous materials.

The ultimate test for these innovators will come at scale. We maintain the firm position that a technology is not successfully commercialised if its business model relies on transferring occupational risk to poorly protected or underpaid workers. Livelihood dignity and operational safety must be built into the core economics of the enterprise, ensuring that the technology's success is inseparable from the well-being of its workforce.

New decomposition technologies will have little commercial value unless manufacturers agree to buy the resulting feedstocks. What role will Upaya play in securing offtake agreements, setting quality specifications and convincing industrial buyers to absorb any initial cost premium?
Shruti Goel: We distinguish between creating the conditions for market adoption and guaranteeing a specific commercial sale. At this early stage, our priority is to transition a technology from a scientific proof of concept to a commercially relevant output that fits within India's textile ecosystem.

To achieve this, Upaya and The Biomimicry Institute provide a dual-track support system:

• Technical Validation and Specifications: The Biomimicry Institute will lead the technical work, helping entrepreneurs define and meet the rigorous quality specifications required by industrial buyers. We will also facilitate strategic ecosystem partnerships to provide the independent testing and validation that industrial buyers demand before adoption.
• Market Linkages and Pilots: Upaya will leverage its corporate network to open doors for demonstrable pilot programmes supported by corporate foundations. These pilots serve as a ‘commercial learning exercise’ rather than just a technology demonstration, allowing us to identify the exact specifications and economics required for an industrial customer to adopt the solution.

Critically, we do not expect industrial buyers to absorb an indefinite green premium. For these technologies to be truly scalable, the resulting output must be compelling on its own merits, whether through price, performance, or supply-chain value. Our role is to support the entrepreneur in refining their model until it can thrive commercially without permanent external subsidy or intervention.

There can be a conflict between creating large numbers of jobs and improving the quality of each job, particularly when investors expect enterprises to reduce labour costs. How will Upaya prevent scale and profitability targets from weakening wages, safety or employment security?
Shruti Goel: We challenge the premise that there is an inherent conflict between scale and job quality; in fact, we argue that in the waste sector, they are fundamentally complementary. Unlike sectors where labour might be treated as an interchangeable cost to be minimised, waste management enterprises rely on a workforce that can operate consistently and reliably in complex, operationally demanding environments.

High attrition, unsafe conditions, and unreliable wages are not merely social concerns; they are direct business risks that create significant operational costs and undermine long-term performance. Our strategy to prevent the weakening of job quality rests on three key pillars:

• Rigorous Selection: Our vetting process specifically filters for impact champions—entrepreneurs who recognise that worker productivity and retention are essential drivers of enterprise profitability. We ensure that a commitment to dignified work is built into the business's DNA long before an investment is made.
• Business Model Design: We look for models where productivity and enterprise performance reinforce one another. A technology is not considered successfully commercialised if its economics depend on transferring occupational risk to poorly protected workers.
• Impact-Linked Finance (ILF): We move beyond intended impact by tying financial terms to verified outcomes. Through ILF, an enterprise’s cost of capital is directly linked to its performance against pre-defined pillars of dignity, such as wage parity and safety standards, ensuring that financial success and job quality are structurally aligned as the business scales.

For the DJA x NoF accelerator, while we will not lay claim to large-scale job creation through the cohort, our objective is to build quality into the design of the pilots. By measuring these social results alongside technical performance from day one, we aim to demonstrate a viable model that creates a high-quality pathway out of poverty as it moves towards commercialisation.

The release refers broadly to communities on the frontline of environmental impacts. How will the programme account for differences within those communities, including gender, caste, migration status and workers' position within informal supply chains?
Shruti Goel: We recognise that waste workers and communities on the frontline of environmental degradation are not homogeneous groups. Because inclusivity is one of the four non-negotiable pillars of a dignified job, we strictly assess every enterprise for non-discriminatory hiring and wage parity regardless of gender, caste, or background.

To practically account for differences in migration status and a worker's position within informal supply chains, our Job Category Definition expands beyond conventional payroll roles to recognise four distinct forms of economic participation that characterise the Indian economy:

• Full-time and part-time: Direct employees on the company payroll.
• Micro-entrepreneurship: Livelihoods that are self-managed by the worker but maintained through a direct economic relationship with the company.
• Affiliate and platform-based: Recognising individuals associated through intermediaries or earning through company-enabled platforms, such as the drivers in our mobility cohorts.

Crucially, we maintain rigour through the twin requirements of verifiability and traceability. A role is not counted as a job created simply because someone is nominally associated with an enterprise. We require company-level data or transaction records to prove an active, ongoing economic relationship and the generation of meaningful income. This analytical approach ensures that as new technologies move towards commercialisation, they are delivering a genuine, verifiable improvement in the economic position of individuals from all community backgrounds, rather than merely increasing nominal association.

When the pilot is assessed, how will Upaya weigh tonnes of waste processed against wages, job retention, worker progression, enterprise viability and environmental performance? Which results would need to be independently verified before the model is expanded?
Shruti Goel: We do not reduce the success of our programmes to a single metric such as tonnes of waste processed. Instead, our underlying hypothesis is that a successful decomposition technology must satisfy three critical tests simultaneously to prove its model is ready for expansion.

The three pillars of our evaluation framework are:

• Environmental Performance: We move beyond simple ‘tonnes processed’ to understand the quality of diversion. Using the Carbon Handprint Methodology, we measure the net positive impact, such as avoided emissions and resource recovery, relative to conventional waste disposal alternatives.
• Social and Employment Outcomes: We assess whether the enterprise creates safe, rewarding, stable, and inclusive work. This includes measuring tangible improvements in worker income, job satisfaction, and the achievement of individual goals.
• Commercial and Technical Viability: A technology is not a solution if it cannot function without permanent catalytic support. We evaluate whether there is a credible pathway to market, viable unit economics, and enough customer demand to sustain the business at scale.

For us, a pilot fails if it succeeds in one area but compromises another. For example, a commercially viable model that relies on poor-quality employment does not meet our definition of impact.

Independent verification is a mandatory prerequisite before any model is expanded. Upaya commissions third-party organisations to conduct rigorous social impact assessments and climate impact audits using defined methodologies. We also verify financial performance to ensure the enterprise is a sustainable vehicle for long-term job creation. The ultimate objective of the pilot is to generate this evidence, proving that the model can simultaneously deliver environmental value, commercial health, and dignified livelihoods at scale.