As sustainability and technology increasingly converge, India’s circular economy is emerging as a powerful example of how responsible innovation can drive both environmental impact and inclusive growth. In this conversation with Tech Achieve Media on the occasion of National Technology Day 2026, Vikram Prabakar, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Recykal, explains how AI, digital traceability, and purpose-built hardware are transforming waste management by formalising the informal sector and improving transparency across the recycling value chain. He also outlines why India’s unique blend of grassroots recovery networks and advanced digital infrastructure could position the country as a global leader in circular economy innovation
TAM: How are the businesses balancing rapid technological advancement with ethical responsibility, customer trust, accessibility, data security, sustainability, and inclusive growth?
Vikram Prabakar: When we started Recykal, we spent the first two years not building software, we spent it with kabadiwalas, waste aggregators, and ragpickers, understanding how they price material, how they get paid, and where they get cheated. That groundwork determined how every platform feature was designed. All our platforms create win-win situations for all stakeholders and AI features solve problems that are hard for humans to solve at scale.
Our AI work with Google reflects this directly. SmartSkan, built on Google’s open-source CircularNet model and running on Google Cloud, identifies plastics, metals, paper, and e-waste at Material Recovery Facilities with over 90% accuracy. We piloted a QR-coded waste segregation programme across nearly 13,000 households in Latur and Bengaluru. Each bag was linked to its source household. When returned to a collection centre, SmartSkan assessed material type and contamination. Sorting quality went from 15% to over 80%. Recyclers receiving cleaner, verified material saw its market value increase approximately six times. The practical effect for informal workers is that they now have a documented quality record reducing the scope for arbitrary under-pricing at the point of sale. Our subsidiary Retearn was set up because digital platforms alone cannot recover physical material. We needed AI-led collection and sorting hardware built for Indian volumes, climate, and operating conditions. Retearn’s machines are patented and integrate directly with Recykal’s platform, making every container return traceable and auditable in real time.
A stunning example of using technology for inclusive growth and sustainability is India’s first state-wide Deposit Return System, which is designed to create a collection network to include ragpickers and kabadiwalas as formal participants. Under the scheme, every container is tracked through unique serialised QR codes. The system can generate up to one crore codes per minute and flags any duplicate or tampered code at the point of return.
TAM: How can responsible innovation help position India as a global leader in technology, digital transformation, and sustainable innovation?
Vikram Prabakar: India’s advantage in the circular economy is not widely acknowledged, partly because it is framed as a deficit, inadequate infrastructure, large informal sector, inconsistent enforcement. We see it differently. The informal kabadiwala and ragpicker network already recovers an estimated 60% of India’s recyclable materials without formal recognition or state subsidy. No developed economy has collection infrastructure that is simultaneously that granular, that distributed, and that cost-efficient. The challenge has been formalisation and fair pricing not capacity.
The Goa DRS is a working example of what formalisation can look like. The scheme integrates Retearn’s patented AI-led collection machines, ragpickers as legitimate return-point participants earning the fee per container, and kabadiwalas as formal collection centres all on one digital platform with secure QR tracking. The scheme is built to accommodate the informal sector, hence, making the Goa model operationally achievable.
The same logic applies to our EPR infrastructure. India’s plastic, e-waste, and battery EPR frameworks are among the more demanding in the developing world, and the compliance systems we have built to operate within them fraud-resistant traceability mechanism, GenAI-powered document verification, real-time audit trails are directly applicable to EPR and DRS frameworks now being developed across similar economies. The combination of regulatory depth, a large informal recovery network, domestic hardware IP, and AI-verified material traceability gives India a replicable model for material circularity and as infrastructure that other developing economies will need.
