Attero Recycling can be easily called a firm sprouted from just an idea — recycling e-waste. In a bid to garner investor support to turn their idea into a business, siblings Nitin Gupta and Rohan Gupta focused on creating spreadsheets and presentations that would articulate their thoughts. 

Soon after, the Guptas were successful in attracting initial funding of $6.3 million from top-tier venture capital firms IndoUS Venture Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2008. Attero Recycling, a clean-tech start-up firm that recycles electronic waste, came into existence. 

“Our first round of financing was an inflection point for us. Our concept was new, the market size was big. But we had passion and belief in our idea,” says Nitin Gupta, chief executive at Attero Recycling. To kick-start the business, Mr Gupta utilised the capital fund to build a highly automated facility for integrated e-waste recycling at Roorkee, Uttrakhand. 

The firm also built a first-of-its kind indigenous metallurgical process developed in its R&D division. The firm, which has around 85 employees, has now clocked up more than 165 clients, which includes large technology firms such as Wipro , HCL , Tata Tele Services and Google . 

“Recycling e-waste is a billion-dollar opportunity. India will produce around 1 million tonne of e-waste by 2012, up from the current level of 440,000 tonne per annum,” says Mr Gupta, who expects to achieve a topline of Rs 1,000 crore for the financial year 2013-2014. “We partnered with Attero after realising their potential and looking at their remarkable progress in the last two years. Growing e-waste is a major problem across nations,” says Sameet S Mehta, who joined the Board of Attero as a director on behalf of Granite Hill, when it led the investment round of Rs 15 crore in the start-up firm in July this year. 

Repeat investors Draper Fisher Jurveston and IndoUS Venture also participated in the round, which is expected to help Attero expand it s recycling facilities in Uttrakhand. As the market expands, the two-year-old start-up is beefing up capacity to keep pace. The reason why constant rounds of additional equity capital are important for the young start-up. Currently, Attero is in the process of raising another $5 million from International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector lending arm of World Bank , to scale up its clean technology business. 

“One of the important factors why we were successful in raising capital is because we have developed proprietary technology to recycle and extract metals from e-waste. We can recycle over 36,000 tonne of e-waste per annum,” says Mr Gupta, an alumnus of IIT-Delhi, the London School of Business, and the Stern School of Business in New York University. 

Another potential source of revenue from e-waste is the retrieval of components and spare parts for reuse. In the process, certain precious metals such as gold, platinum, silver and copper are extracted from the electronic scrap, said Mr Gupta. 

Industry watchers now reckon the opportunity in clean technology is larger than in the internet. “Energy efficiency alone is a $10-billion opportunity in India. Big investment opportunities cover areas such as LED lighting, water purification, recycling of e-waste, food processing and wind power, solar power, and second-generation biofuels,” says Anil Paranjape, a venture capitalist who runs Fusiontech, a Pune-based early-stage venture capital fund focused on clean technology. 

However, besides the opportunities, there is always uncertainty in cleantech business, but you should expect the unexpected,” says Mr Gupta of Attero.