Introduction to Circular Economy [Self-Paced Online Course]

Shyam Sunder is the co-founder of Cleanlabel, a circular economy platform for groceries.

He is on a mission to divert a billion single-use plastics reaching the landfills & ocean.

With an education in engineering & masters in design, he enjoys the exploration between technology, design & innovation. 

Dhwani Mehta, with a BSc. in Economics and Industrial Organisation from University of Warwick has previously worked at growth stage startups in healthcare and fashion-tech space.

She's always been passionate about circular economy business models because they solve for the inefficiencies in the optimum utilisation of resources. Ecovia was born to circularise the linear consumption model in the packaging industry.

An independent journalist, recent author and a proud member of the Solid Waste Management Round Table, Bengaluru.

Savita's love for local solutions reinforced her firm belief that it takes local, cost-effective solutions to deal with monumental issues like garbage

Her company Endlessly Green provides sturdy composters for home and community composting.

Devina is a campaigner for Fairtrade and Fashion Revolution. While pursuing a fellowship program in social entrepreneurship from IDEX Accelerator, Devina was placed at Fairtrade India for an internship.

4 years later Devina is working with Fairtrade on raising awareness about sustainable food and fashion through campaigns and outreach programs. She started Show Your Label in India in 2015 and volunteers with Fashion Revolution India as their Bangalore coordinator.

Mitali started Insectifii with an aim to use insects to simultaneously solve the problem of food waste and the highly unsustainable animal feed industry, two leading culprits of environmental degradation and climate change. She drew on her combined experience of working with insects as a neuroscientist and studying circular business at the University of Amsterdam.

She has been a neuroscientist researcher at the University of Cambridge, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and National Center for Biological Sciences, Bangalore.

Pawan worked in the capital markets industry for nearly a decade and held leadership positions at Reuters, Deutsche Bank and ANZ, before plunging into the startup world.

Spotting an opportunity, Pawan founded Packmile, a packaging solutions company in 2015 and invested time & research in understanding the technology of packaging solutions, and customer needs in the transport and transit space.

In 2017, to help in solving the plastic waste crisis in India, Packmile made a fundamental shift to sustainable packaging solutions.

Himadri Das is an urbanist and academician who works at the cross-section of design and sustainability. He is a trustee at Repaircafe Bengaluru Foundation.

More than 19 years of Professional Experience in Architecture, Urban Design, Planning and Sustainable Transit projects.

Specialties: TOD, Sustainable Transport and Communities in Cities, including NMT accessibility plans, neighborhood improvement plans, physical master plans, urban renewal plans, heritage conservation plans and mobility plans;

Purna Sarkar is a human resources professional who left a corporate job to start the Repair Cafe Bengaluru Foundation. She is an active member of Swaraj Abhiyan.

A theatre coach, founder of an NGO on sustainable living, a human resource specialist work towards the general well being of society.

With over 15 years of experience in various industries, bringing a thoughtful perspective of converting problems into opportunities. A Teacher in soul, entrepreneurial at heart and a team player learnt to appreciate the diversity

Sobia Rafiq is an Indian architect and urbanist. As a project architect she worked on the redevelopment of a village called Thimmanayadoddi (Anekal) & as an architect-fellow she conceptualised and collaboratively set up Selco Foundation’s Urban Community Lab.

Her work as an Urbanist has focussed on solving Solid Waste Management issues in the city of Bengaluru and other cities and towns in Karnataka through engaging at multiple levels and scales, thereby introducing system thinking, strategic planning, data analytics & GIS mapping

Shruti is one of the founders and the Creative Director at Athlos. While leading the Branding and Communications at Athlos, Shruti brings her design experience in adding “doing more with less functionality” across Athlos products.

Shruti believes that sustainability is a continuous ongoing process across all functions of running a business: operations, product, design. This belief also helps her oversee operational optimizations at Athlos, like reducing packaging wastage and up-cycling of production scraps

Pravin is one of the founders of Athlos. Pravin drives the fabric development at Athlos, with a focus on sustainable fabrics that meet the performance needed in activewear.

When it comes to sustainability for businesses, Pravin believes that it needs to be a core team ethic and not just a marketing pitch.

That’s when all business actions, big and small, contributing towards sustainability will start aligning effectively.

BLive is India's first Multi-brand Digital Platform for EV Users, which helps Discover, Buy, and Service EVs.

Sandeep and Samarth started the EV platform with EV Tourism, again a first in India in late 2018, offering curated tours on EBikes to Discover and Experience EVs.

The need to drive adoption of clean mobility in India inspired Samarth & Sandeep to start BLive. Prior to BLive, Samarth spent over a decade with IBM and held several key positions while there.

Gabriella D'Cruz is a marine conservationist with a Masters in Biodiversity Conservation and Management from the University of Oxford.

Having spent the last ten years in coastal conservation projects she is now focussed on better understanding India's seaweed industry and working towards building in safeguards for its sustainable growth.

She currently runs a seaweed company called The Good Ocean which will be piloting Goa's first native seaweed farm later this year. She lives in Goa with her dog Nori.

Neha is a sustainable textile designer, currently based in Mumbai, with a B.Des graduate in Textile Design from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. During her post-graduation in sustainable textile design from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (UAL) her passion for sustainability and design grew.

This firsthand experience in this second largest polluting industry made Neha more passionate about becoming an active change agent. The basic goal was to bring a concrete shift in perspective. The creative outcome of this research was the project 'SOOT'.

Noorain is a humanitarian architect by profession and a self taught illustrator. She has worked and taught in a variety of fields including visual arts, architecture and community development, all approached with the intention of bringing about positive change in our communities and in our environment.

Noorain's architectural works have most often focused on transitional housing solutions, low cost homes and finding built environment solutions to social problems. Noorain is also exploring the field of forced migration and urban refugees, facilitating cross-sectoral solutions to mixed migration issues.

Purav Desai has been entrepreneurial since his early days. In 2018, Purav and his other friends launched his first company, Cupable, a B2B startup dedicated to replacing single-use packaging with reusable systems. 

Having understood the intricacies of the packaging framework in India, it led to the birth of his second startup - Refillable. Refillable is India's 1st Zero Waste Platform for your Home Care Liquids which allows customers to refill their favorite home care products in their existing packaging through our state-of-the-art refill truck.

Rahul Batra's interest in building innovative packaging solutions began in his early days at Zomato, which led to starting his first company along with friends named Cupable, a B2B startup dedicated to replacing single-use packaging with reusable systems.

Understanding the problem at its core and seeing the repercussions of Covid led to the birth of their second venture - Refillable. Refillable is India's 1st Zero Waste Platform for your Home Care Liquids which allows customers to refill their favorite home care products in their existing packaging through our state-of-the-art refill truck.

Prateek has always felt deeply about the changes in our environment, the plastic waste menace in particular and what it's doing to our planet. While trying to reduce his own plastic consumption he discovered how hard it was, there were very few options - He found recycling to be inadequate, waste management to be unmanageable, and bioplastics to be even heavier on earth. 

As a 3 time tech founder, Prateek spent the last 5 years working on conversational AI at JIO Haptik. He decided to put his technology and AI experience to good use and do something about the plastic problem.

Having being born into a family of entrepreneurs where her mother's side of the family has been actively working in the garment business for 50 plus years - Mahima's journey with clothing has always been very special, growing up knowing the story behind the people who crafted all all our Indian clothing.

SUI was born with the idea to making conscious clothing exciting, powerful yet one that carries a green heart. Each story shared, each person we work with holds close to our heart.

Regi George, inspired by the stories of Albert Schweitzer & Mahatma Gandhi, wanted to be a doctor for the poor. At the Government Medical College at Alleppey he met Lalitha, his classmate. He was Christian, she was Hindu. They had much in common, Lalitha says, “I did not want to be the eleventh doctor in a place where there were already 10 doctors, I wanted to be the first doctor where there were none.”

Tribal Health Initiative is a Charitable Public Trust and it launched its activities in September 1993 starting as an outpatient facility in a hut built for them by local tribals in Sittilingi village, in Tamil Nadu

Aditi Veena aka Ditty is a Goa-based singer-songwriter. An urban ecologist by day and a musician by night, Ditty grew up with a deep-rooted love for nature thanks to her mother, a botanist, and her father who often took the family out for picnics.

Ditty’s style of music is indie/alternative In the last two years, she has performed at the Ziro Festival, NH7 in Pune, Ranthambore Music and Wildlife Festival, and more. She aims to give the world a wake-up call one song at a time while maintaining a sustainable lifestyle and low carbon footprint during her music tours.

Pranoy is a fifth generation producer at Kerehaklu in Chikmagalur – who have been growers of specialty coffee, avocados and pepper among other plants since 1953 – while coexisting with local biodiversity.

With a BSc in Biology and Ecology at UNSW in Sydney, Pranoy is working towards making people more aware of the flora and fauna of the Western Ghats of India through Kerehaklu’s produce. Being a pioneer in sustainable farm produce, Pranoy continues to explore modern farming techniques at Kerehaklu.

Popularly known as the Clothing Man and the recipient of 2015 Ramon Magsaysay award, Anshu Gupta founded Goonj with a mission to highlight some basic but ignored needs of people on the development agenda, using clothing as a metaphor.

Anshu studied mass communication apart from doing a Masters in Economics and started

as a freelance journalist.

He left a corporate communication job in 1998 and initiated Goonj.

Sahar is a circular-economy nerd, and co-author of ‘Bare Necessities - How to lead a zero-waste life’ Published by Penguin Random House. Sahar has obtained accredited degrees on environmental topics in India, the USA and England, becoming a University of Cambridge alumni.

Her business offers zero-waste products, services, including online sustainability courses.

Sahar was also a part of WHO in Geneva and SELCO, implementing decentralized projects in rural Karnataka. Her work has been recognized by Google, Al Jazeera, NDTV, Vogue, Elle, Femina and India Today, among others.

Being a firm believer in the impact of communication, raising awareness, and education being the foundation of change, he has always been passionate about sustainability.

Mehul completed his MBA in the field to learn about the life cycle of products and how every process has an impact on the environment.

Mehul is a Climate Reality Leader with 5+ years experience in the startup space while being actively involved in curating educational courses, marketing and business development for Bare Necessities.

With a background in environmental studies, Reshma has always been passionate about the environment and the waste problem in India.

Her time at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on a waste management project, opened her eyes to the struggles and challenges waste workers faced on a daily basis at their jobs. 

Upon joining the Bare team, the passion to first lead a mindful lifestyle and help others do the same increased. She now works as a Marketing associate at Bare to encourage its audience to follow a sustainable lifestyle through diverse forms of content.