CoFounder and CEO

Banyan Nation

Mani Vajipey is the Co-Founder and CEO of Banyan Nation, a technology driven recycling company that is changing the way India looks at plastics, recycling and waste management.

During his travels across India, the filth and squalor deeply disturbed him and motivated him to build an organization that would solve India's waste management challenges through technology and business innovations.

Prior to Banyan, Mani was with Qualcomm Inc., in California working on the design, development, testing and commercialization activities of mobile technologies for Apple iPad and iPhone product lines. Mani holds dual MBAs from UC Berkeley (Haas) and Columbia Business Schools; an MS Electrical Engineering Degree from University of Delaware; BTech Electrical Engineering Degree from NIT, Warangal.

Through Banyan, Mani hopes to change the perception and use of recycled plastic in manufacturing from being a novelty to the norm.

Notes on Banyan:

Banyan is this year's finalist at The Circular Awards at the World Economic Forum in Davos and incidentally is the first Indian company ever to be nominated since the inception of the awards.

Banyan is recognized for its pioneering work in closed loop recycling with leading brands such as Tata Motors, L'Oreal in India. To do so, Banyan developed an India-first cleaning technology that removes contaminants such as paints, inks, adhesives etc. to produce high quality near-virgin grade plastic that can be used to manufacture mainstream high products and packaging such as Automotive Bumpers, Shampoo bottles, high end furniture etc. Banyan recycled plastics is also know as Better Plastic (TM).

Today the recycling supply chain in India is highly fragmented and is primarily driven by small scale informal sector recyclers. Banyan's data intelligence platform allows it to integrate thousands of informal recyclers and as result achieve significant control over the supply chain. The data intelligence platform has been extended to manage municipal solid waste and has been licensed by the state government to manage city wastes.