Q. What drove you to be an entrepreneur? What made you get into the field of recycling and refining metals?
I always wanted to be independent and do something different that also helped the nation, created a broader impact, rather than following a conventional business path. While my family has been involved in the metals business, the focus has largely been on virgin metals. I got interested in recycling and refining when, as an exchange student, I visited scrapyards in the US and UK.
After setting up Rikayaa, we initially imported scrap and recycled it in our facility in India. Subsequently, we started importing 99.9 percent pure tin ingots from Indonesia to supply the domestic market. When I realised that India’s tin requirement was almost entirely dependent on imports, I started looking into developing a domestic recycling solution for tin, and eventually came up with a green refining process combining hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical techniques.
Q. What made you focus on sustainability?
India’s metals ecosystem has traditionally relied heavily on natural resource extraction, which raised concerns for us, given the finite nature of these resources. This made us think of recycling scrap as a more sustainable alternative.
From the outset, our vision was always clear: We wanted to make India self-reliant in critical mineral recycling. This led to the focus on building a clean-tech metals platform and consistently producing recycled metals that meet global quality and purity standards.
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Q. What were the challenges you faced?
There were several challenges, especially in the early stages. From a technical standpoint, achieving consistent, high purity levels from recycled scrap involved multiple iterations and initial failures. At the same time, the supply-chain ecosystem for such operations was a problem. With the plant located in Baddi, Himachal Pradesh, logistics and transportation also posed challenges in the initial phase.
Developing a new recycling-led process also required significant upfront investment, and given that the technology was still being refined, this carried a financial risk.
Market acceptance was also gradual, as tin was traditionally an imported product. We had to do sample trials and meet people in person to build trust and adoption.
Q. How much of a difference do sustainable solutions make to buyers?
There is a government PLI scheme for electronics manufacturing, which incentivises domestic value addition. Alongside this, there is increasing emphasis on sustainability and ESG compliance within the electronics supply chain, making recycled and lower-carbon materials more relevant for manufacturers. Both these factors have indirectly strengthened demand for locally sourced recycled inputs, and helped our business and revenues.
Q. What are the opportunities ahead considering this is proprietary technology?
Looking ahead, there is significant scope to scale operations further.
Moreover, since we are already manufacturing both tin and lead, the raw materials required for solder manufacturing, we also plan to start the manufacturing of solder and supply to electronics manufacturers directly.
Beyond this, we are also exploring the recovery of additional metals such as copper, silver and gold from e-waste, along with opportunities in bismuth recovery. Research and development efforts in these areas are currently underway.
First Published: Jan 13, 2026, 18:39
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