Meet Mani Vajipeyajula and Rajkiran Madangopal, the co-founders of Banyan Nation.
While pursuing his MBA at University of Cambridge, Mani visited India and was stunned by what he saw.
Overflowing landfills. Plastic choking the streets. Zero infrastructure for reuse. But instead of turning away (like the majority), he went deeper.
He went ALL IN, spoke to rag pickers, kabadiwalas, waste contractors, and everyone else in the plastic chain (yes, even after Cambridge MBA).
He called his friend Raj from the US. And in 2013, they both quit their Silicon Valley jobs and built Banyan Nation from scratch.
Their mission was clear: Build India’s first tech-led plastic recycling infrastructure.
✅ 1 crore+ kg of plastic recycled (= plastic used by 9 lakh Indians annually)
✅ 25,000+ tons of CO₂ saved (= emissions from 1Cr litres of petrol)
✅ Used in bottles for Unilever, Shell, HPCL, and Reckitt
They built a tech-led system that could process dirty post-consumer plastic at scale:
Dirty plastic
↓
Banyan tech
↓
High-grade recycled polyolefins
↓
Used in shampoo, lotion & detergent bottles
This is what solving the real problem looks like.
Not banning plastic, but building scalable, circular systems where plastic isn’t dumped, it’s reused.
Everyone loves to say plastic is the villain. Honestly? That argument is lazy. Plastic is the only material that took our civilization one step forward, from sterile syringes to safe food.
We need more people like these, who didn’t wait for regulations. They became the benchmark.
Agreed?