“I usually gave my old clothes to my house help or put them in dry waste, but I never really knew what happened after that. There was no reliable way to dispose of them responsibly,” says Suruchi Athalye, a Bengaluru resident living in a high-rise community.
It is a problem sitting inside almost every urban home, rarely spoken about but constantly unfolding in the background. Wardrobes expand and shrink with changing seasons, occasions, and impulse purchases, but the journey of clothing rarely ends with intention or clarity.
Clothes are handed over informally, stored away for years, or discarded into mixed waste streams, where their fate becomes invisible. What follows is rarely tracked or questioned. In that invisibility lies a growing urban challenge that is often overlooked.
Textile waste is one of the most under-recognised environmental issues in Indian cities, not because it is small, but because it is hidden behind everyday convenience and the assumption that someone else will handle it.
It was this gap between intention and outcome that brought together Prasad Lingawar and Nachiket, two engineers who would go on to build ‘NoKasa’ in Bengaluru, a system designed to bring structure, accountability, and dignity to how clothes are discarded and reused.
A shared instinct takes shape
The duo first met as hostel mates at VIT Pune, where their friendship began long before any idea of building a company together. Over the years, their careers took very different directions.
Textile waste is one of the most under-recognised environmental issues in Indian cities.
Prasad built QuodeIt, a coding assessment startup that was later acquired within a year and a half, and went on to work across multiple growth roles, including leading revenue expansion at Dyte, a Y Combinator-backed company.
Nachiket built a deep technical foundation in semiconductor systems and chip design, working at Qualcomm and Tenstorrent before moving into AI compute chip initiatives at Meta.
Despite these different worlds, the intent to build something together never faded.
“We had always spoken about building something together,” says Prasad. “We were just waiting for a problem that felt worth committing ourselves to.”
That search for a meaningful problem eventually brought them to Bengaluru in December 2023, where the first version of NoKasa began to develop. However, it had nothing to do with textiles at that point.
Before clothes came into the picture
The duo did not start out thinking about textile waste at all. It came from a more casual curiosity about how people behave in everyday life, especially how small incentives can change habits. While observing how quick-commerce platforms were influencing user behaviour through rewards, they began wondering if something similar could make waste disposal feel simpler and more natural, rather than something people postpone or avoid.
Their initial concept of the platform revolved around allowing people to hand over scrap and receive digital rewards instead of cash, which could then be used across consumer platforms. The aim was to make disposal feel less like a chore and more like an integrated digital action within daily life.
“We thought waste could be integrated into the digital economy through incentives,” he explains to The Better India.
To validate this direction, they spent time speaking with companies such as Swiggy, Zomato, and BigBasket, while also trying to understand how waste actually moved through Bengaluru’s informal and formal networks. What they realised was not a structured system, but a fragmented ecosystem where multiple actors operated independently without a unified flow.
“It was not a system in the real sense,” says Nachiket. “It was a set of disconnected processes happening in parallel.”
What the ground revealed
The first half of 2024 became a period of extensive field immersion for the founders. Instead of building immediately, they spent time observing how waste is actually processed in the city.
Between February and May 2025, NoKasa built and tested its first structured solution, a smart bin system deployed across residential societies.
They visited material recovery facilities and worked closely with organisations like Hasiru Dala and Sahaas NGO to understand how collection, segregation, and recycling worked on the ground.
It was during this phase of exploration and learning that NoKasa was officially registered as a company in July in Bengaluru.
One insight stood out repeatedly. Waste segregation in India was still overwhelmingly manual, dependent on human labour at every stage rather than technology or automation.
“We initially assumed there would already be structured systems in place. But what we saw was entirely manual sorting happening across different points,” the co-founder adds.
This led them to explore a more technical solution, building a robotic system using a pneumatic arm to automate segregation. While the concept made sense in theory, it immediately ran into practical limitations. Most facilities operated on thin margins and could not afford expensive automation solutions, no matter how efficient they appeared on paper.
“That was the moment we realised feasibility is just as important as innovation,” says Prasad. The idea was eventually dropped, but the understanding it created about cost, scale, and ground realities stayed with them.
The experiment that changed direction
In January 2025, the founders decided to stop relying on assumptions and instead test directly with users. They ran a two-week scrap collection drive across Indiranagar, HSR Layout, JP Nagar, and Jayanagar in Bengaluru, working with dry waste collection centres supported by Hasiru Dala.
Households were given a simple option to request pickups on their platform, and local partners handled the collection.
This period ended up redefining the company’s direction. “Out of every ten conversations, at least four people asked if we collected clothes,” Nachiket recalls. “It was not occasional, it was consistent everywhere we went.”
This was not just anecdotal. The data from pickups reflected the same pattern, with nearly half of all requests involving textile waste. The broad exploration of waste had narrowed into a specific, underserved problem space, and the founders doubled down on it.
Launched in November 2025, the doorstep pickup model became the most refined version of NoKasa’s system.
“That was the moment we realised where the real gap was,” he adds. By February 2025, NoKasa had fully pivoted to focus on textile waste.
The waste no one sees clearly
Unlike plastic or food waste, textile waste does not create immediate discomfort in daily life. It does not smell, leak, or visibly degrade, which makes it easier to ignore or postpone. Most people assume that donating clothes is enough, but the reality is far more complex once garments leave the household.
“Donation feels like closure, but it is not always the endpoint. What happens after that is where the uncertainty begins,” Prasad says.
Many donation systems receive far more clothes than they can process. Some garments are reused, but large portions remain untracked due to limited capacity and infrastructure. Informal channels exist but operate without transparency or consistency. The result is a system where good intentions do not always translate into responsible outcomes.
This gap between perception and reality became the foundation of the platform’s approach.
From society bins to doorstep reality
Between February and May 2025, NoKasa built and tested its first structured solution, a smart bin system deployed across residential societies in Bengaluru, beginning with Jayanagar.
Residents could drop clothes into shared bins that automatically weighed the garments and triggered instant cashback via UPI, turning everyday decluttering into a reward-driven action.
“Each bin had a capacity of 100 kilograms, and once it reached around 80 percent capacity, we would receive an alert telling us it was time to empty it. That threshold system helped us plan collections efficiently and made the model far more predictable in real-time operations,” Nachiket explains.
The model expanded to more than 30 societies and initially showed strong engagement, validating both demand and willingness to participate. “We believed societies would be the most efficient way to aggregate demand,” adds Prasad.
Once collected, clothes are transported to a warehouse in Bengaluru where they undergo a second layer of structured sorting.
However, as the system scaled, operational complexity increased substantially. Managing multiple locations, guaranteeing consistent usage, and coordinating logistics across societies created challenges that limited further expansion.
By late 2025, the team made another pivot, moving towards a doorstep pickup model that removed dependency on shared infrastructure.
Making disposal effortless
Launched in November 2025, the doorstep pickup model became the most refined version of NoKasa’s system. The idea was to eliminate every layer of friction between intent and action.
Users install the app, enter the number of clothes they want to dispose of, with a minimum requirement of 25 garments, choose a time slot, and confirm a pickup. On the scheduled day, a trained field agent arrives at the doorstep, sorts clothes into wearable and non-wearable categories in front of the user, weighs them transparently, and transfers cashback instantly via UPI.
“We pay Rs 20 per kilogram, but only for wearable clothes, as non-wearable garments are not included in the payout calculation,” explains Nachiket.
“There is a Rs 50 doorstep pickup fee as well. So, if someone gives 10 kilograms of wearable clothes, the total value becomes Rs 200. After deducting the Rs 50 pickup charge, the user receives Rs 150. The entire process is managed through our agent app, where the weighing happens in front of the customer, and the final amount is transferred instantly via UPI once the segregation and calculation are completed.”
“We realised convenience is everything. If something is not effortless, people will not adopt it consistently,” he adds. The visibility of sorting also helped build trust, as users could see exactly how each garment was evaluated.
Inside the system after pickup
Once collected, clothes are transported to a warehouse in Bengaluru where they undergo a second layer of structured sorting. The system is divided into three clear categories. Category A includes garments that are in good condition and can be reused immediately.
Category B includes items with minor issues, such as fading or loose threads, that can be refurbished. Category C includes damaged garments that cannot be reused.
Categories A and B are channelled into resale through a network of local partners who purchase garments either by weight or by piece, depending on quality.
Category C is processed through Sahaas NGO, where it enters recycling and upcycling pathways to confirm that nothing reaches landfill unnecessarily. “We always prioritise reuse first,” says Prasad. “Recycling is only when reuse is not possible.”
What scale looks like today
In just over a year, the platform has diverted more than 23 tonnes of textile waste from landfills, equivalent to nearly one lakh garments. Around 60 to 70 percent of this material has been reused, while the remainder has been responsibly recycled or upcycled through partner networks.
The platform currently serves over 2,500 users and processes close to 1,000 pickups every month, with demand continuing to grow faster than operational capacity. The company operates on a resale-driven revenue model, earning primarily from Category A and B garments sold to local partners, while Category C allows full system responsibility without direct revenue contribution. It closed the last financial year at Rs 7.25 lakh in revenue.
“We are still early, but demand is already ahead of what we can serve,” adds the co-founder.
The team behind this is a lean group of around ten members. It includes the two founders, four people in operations handling pickups and warehouse sorting, three members in technology managing the platform, one full-time support executive, and one marketing intern.
In just over a year, the platform has diverted more than 23 tonnes of textile waste from landfills.
What users are learning
For users, the change is subtle but major. It is less about logistics and more about awareness and responsibility. “I have become far more conscious about how I dispose of clothes,” says Sangeetha Subramanian. “Earlier, it felt like only clearing space; now it feels like part of a system.”
Suruchi adds, “At least now I know there is a proper system in place to manage where my clothes actually go.” Shivesh echoes a similar shift, “It is easier to let go when you know it will be reused instead of wasted.”
The focus now is on strengthening operations within Bengaluru before expanding to other cities. One of the key challenges remains reducing pickup waiting times, which currently range between 10 to 20 days due to high demand.
Please note that bookings are currently full due to high demand. The team expects to reopen new slots soon as it expands operational capacity.
The future plans include setting up a refurbishment centre where garments can be washed, repaired, and improved before re-entering circulation, further increasing reuse rates and extending garment life cycles. “Every garment should live as long as possible. That is what we are building towards,” Nachiket explains.
For Prasad, the priority remains structural integrity over speed of expansion. “It is not just about collecting clothes,” he says. “It is about closing the loop properly so nothing is wasted unnecessarily.”
What begins at home
NoKasa is ultimately a system built around one of the most ignored waste streams in urban India. It turns something as ordinary as wardrobe decluttering into a structured, traceable process that connects households to reuse and recycling networks.
In a city like Bengaluru, where consumption is constant and convenience shapes most decisions, such systems do not change behaviour by demanding more effort. They change behaviour by making the responsible choice easier than the alternative.
And sometimes, that change begins at home, with a single decision to let go of a shirt, and the reassurance that it will continue its journey elsewhere rather than disappear into uncertainty.
All pictures courtesy Prasad Lingawar
