Project W: Q&A with Sarika Bajaj, Co-founder of Refiberd

Project W alumna Sarika Bajaj and her co-founder Tushita Gupta are solving a 186 billion-pound problem. That's 186 billion pounds of textiles that are discarded each year, while less than 1% of that waste is recycled. With deep research backgrounds in artificial intelligence and textile engineering, Sarika and her co-founder founded Refiberd to create a solution to unlock a 100% circular economy. We spoke with Sarika about her mission to end textile waste and how Refiberd is poised to do that.

Q: How did you and your co-founder meet, and how do your skill sets complement one another?

Sarika: My co-founder – Tushita Gupta – and I met in college at Carnegie Mellon, where we both majored in electrical engineering. During my first internship, which was at Intel, I was introduced to electronic textiles. I was on Intel's experimental fashion team, which is not something you would expect at Intel. Through that experience I discovered that deep engineering goes into textiles. That insight started me on a five-year process to get involved in everything textile, from production to sustainability. It was through that lens that, in addition to a master's degree in electrical engineering, I pursued my second graduate degree at Carnegie Mellon in Technology Ventures. The curriculum focused on how to build a startup and for my master's thesis I explored the crux of the problem of textile waste, which is how to sort textiles for proper recycling. I realized that the solution involved a very specific sensor processing program which uses AI.

Meanwhile, Tushita, who also got a master's degree in electrical engineering, developed deep expertise in AI. During college, she did cutting edge research around AI and then also worked two years in AI for a drug discovery company. Tushita's senior capstone project related to the trash sorting problem. We had worked together in different capacities for six years and developed a deep amount of trust. So it just seemed inevitable that we would put our heads together to try to solve this big problem of textile waste by developing a novel AI sorting system. Every day, we were seeing stories about textiles piling up in Ghana or the Atacama Desert. Here was such a massive need and, as technologists, we could provide a solution. So it genuinely feels like it's the best thing we could do with our time right now. That's how Refiberd got started and that is what keeps us going.

Q: There are many companies in the recycling industry. What is the particular problem you're solving with Refiberd and how is your solution different than others?

Sarika: Raw materials account for 50% of all environmental impact and over 186 billion pounds of textile waste is being produced each year. Yet less than 1% of that waste is being recycled. Why isn't more of this waste being recycled? Through the Technology Ventures curriculum at Carnegie Mellon, we learned how important it was to analyze step by step what was contributing to a problem and whether someone else was actually tackling each of those pieces of the problem. So we charted every company in the fashion and textile industry looking at what they were trying to solve, and we discovered that there was an infrastructure gap in the process of recycling textiles that no one else was addressing.

About 15 years ago, there was a real breakthrough in terms of using chemical reagents to recycle textiles, which are mostly blends that contain synthetics. But whenever you're dealing with chemical recycling and any chemical reagent, you need to make sure that whatever material (like metal, spandex, or nylon) you're inputting into that chemical is not going to react to it. That's the piece that was missing before we got started – how to properly analyze textile waste to make sure we know the exact composition of the material before it goes into the recycling process. Unlike other types of waste, like plastics, you can't simply look at a textile and understand what it's made of. You have to actually know all of its components with a high degree of specificity. That's where it becomes a very interesting sensor detection problem and an AI problem.

Q: How does your technology work?

Sarika: We developed a system using imaging and AI to achieve an extreme level of accuracy in determining the composition of textiles. Without getting too technical, by using sensors to apply light to the material, we collect massive amounts of data about the content of the material from the way the light is reflected and absorbed. Essentially this process produces a continuous 3D image of all the textile waste. Then it becomes an AI problem to interpret this enormous data set so we can actually understand the makeup of the material before it goes to the next stage in the recycling process. Our system can even tell us where a certain type of material – for example, a spandex band – is located within a particular item, which also helps avoid contamination in the next step of the recycling process. Our system can be installed into existing textile recycling systems in order to ensure that materials of different types are isolated and sorted and that the correct chemical process is used to break down the material.

Q: Who are your customers?

Sarika: We have potentially three types of customers. First are the large companies that are sorting for resale, like Goodwill. They spend a lot of effort in sorting and only 20% of what they get can actually be resold. Second are the major textile recyclers. And, finally, there are the textile brands that are already pushing the industry to be more sustainable. Many brands have ownership stakes in recycling companies, or they are setting up their own sorting facilities.

Q: You recently raised a seed round. Tell us about that process.

Sarika: Raising our pre-seed round much easier. We were more or less done after our second pitch. Our seed round took a lot longer and involved a very methodical process. We got a lot of help from Lyndsey Boucherle and Rick Moss of Better Ventures, the firm that wrote the first check in our pre-seed round. Lyndsey advised us to build an investor spreadsheet, listing target investors, identifying sources of warm intros, tracking emails and meetings, and prioritizing the order of investors we pitched. We actually saved some of our most promising targets for later in the process, so we had time to practice, learn from when we messed up, and really perfect our presentation. Lyndsey also helped us interpret the kind of feedback we were getting from investors. How did a meeting go? What does it mean if an investor doesn't get back to you right away? How can you tell if an investor is being sincere about their interest in you?

We also conducted diligence on potential investors. As a startup you may not think about doing that, because VCs control the money and are in positions of power. Founders may just feel lucky to get their money. But it's really important to have investors you can work with. We actually raised a little bit less in our seed round than we had planned – $2.8 million – because we rejected over $1 million from investors that other founders cautioned us to avoid. As a founder, you need investors who know your space, who believe in what you're doing, and who can add real value. True Wealth Ventures, who led our seed round, has a seat on our board and Better Ventures and the Schmidt Family Foundation have board observers. They are an awesome group to have in the room.

Q: Is there anything else that you'd like to share about your journey so far?

Sarika: One thing I've learned is the importance of having connections to founders who are at the same stage as you are. As a founder, you get advice from people who are at all sorts of different points in their journey and that advice is often not really relevant. It's not the same as getting advice from people who are experiencing the same problems you face. You often get lost in so many voices and finding that good voice – your fellow founder at the same stage – is tremendous. That's why I'm a big fan of Project W and your Women Entrepreneurs Boot Camp, which brings together seed-stage founders. You've got a great blueprint and there should be more programs like yours.

Watch this video to learn more about how Refiberd is solving the textile waste problem.