E-waste recycling firm Attero has announced a Rs 150 crore expansion marking the next phase of scale-up for the urban mining company, as it looks to align capacity, technology and supply-chain efficiency, co-founder and chief executive Nitin Gupta told FE.
The investment spans three new e-waste recycling plants in Pune, Bengaluru and Faridabad, a copper recycling facility in Rajasthan’s Reengus, and an expanded R&D centre in Greater Noida, together adding around 1 lakh tonnes of annual processing capacity. Its current capacity is 144,000 tonne per annum.
Decentralised Logistics
The geographic spread reflects a deliberate shift towards decentralised processing, aimed at lowering logistics costs as volumes rise. Attero’s e-waste (from consumers and from junk dealers) collection platforms — Selsmart and MetalMandi — now account for almost all of its feedstock, allowing the company to route waste to the nearest processing hub instead of transporting it across states.
“Almost like 100% of our input comes from these two platforms. They’re already mature, they’re already transitioned to a full-scale supply chain for us,” Gupta said. SElsmart is currently active in 19 cities, processing around 1000 orders a day while MetalMandi is operational across 30 cities pan-India. Both are adding a city a month, he added.
Automation sits at the centre of Attero’s expansion strategy and its margin trajectory. The new plants are being designed around robotics-led dismantling, automated battery discharging and precision-based sorting systems. “When these batteries come back for recycling, they come as battery packs which need to be taken apart to process. Today, all of that is happening through a robotic arm,” Gupta said, pointing to both safety and cost benefits.
The shift toward automation is also changing the company’s cost structure. Despite nearly doubling capacity through the current expansion, incremental manpower additions are expected to be limited. “With the expansion that we’re doing, where we’re almost doubling capacity, the extra manpower is around 800 people,” Gupta said, compared with a current workforce of roughly 1,000. The result is a business that is becoming more technology-intensive rather than labour-heavy.
Automation and High-Value Copper
The copper recycling facility adds a further margin lever. Copper is already a significant output from Attero’s recycling operations, with production of about 500 tonnes a month. Until now, this was largely sold as ingots. The new facility allows the company to move into higher-value products. “With this copper refining plant, we are basically converting our ingot into more value-added products, which is basically increasing gross margin,” Gupta said.
These operating levers are playing out alongside rapid top-line growth. Attero’s revenues rose from around Rs 280 crore in FY23 to Rs 440 crore in FY24 and about Rs 970 crore in FY25, with the company continuing to target near-100% annual growth.
“We continue to look at 100% growth year on year — profitable growth, cash-flow-positive growth — and our profit margins are increasing year on year,” Gupta said, though he refrained from giving specifics on margins.
He attributed margin improvement to a combination of automation, logistics efficiencies and scale. “The margin improvement has basically been driven by automation. It’s been driven by reduced logistics costs… and it’s also driven by economies of scale,” he said.