In 2007, Rohan Gupta received a new laptop from his elder brother, Nitin. The gift created a small problem: what should he do with the old one? Selling it was straightforward. Finding an environmentally responsible way to dispose of it was harder. An ordinary household chore became a business investigation. By 2008, the brothers had founded Attero. Their raw material would be the things everyone else had finished using.
- Buy discarded electronics and batteries. Recover materials worth selling.
- Build collection around households, businesses and scrap dealers.
- Keep refining: the value depends on what comes out of the plant.
Today, Attero sits between the owner of an unwanted device and the manufacturer who needs its metals. It collects, processes and recovers materials from electronic waste and lithium-ion batteries. It also retires corporate IT equipment, handling data destruction, refurbishment and recycling. “Urban mining” sounds wonderfully odd until you remember that a laptop is already a carefully assembled collection of valuable materials. Someone has paid to dig them up once.
Someone has to pay
The first complication was economic. In some overseas models the brothers studied, owners paid to have electronics taken away. In India, the owner expected payment for the scrap. Attero would have to buy its input and make money from recovered products. Environmental concern could explain the company’s purpose; it could not settle the supplier’s bill.
A second complication changed the design of the operation. Nitin initially wanted to outsource the recycling of non-ferrous metals and plastic. Rohan favoured processing everything. The argument ran into the market itself: there was no suitable company to hand that work to.
“Then we realised that there was no company to outsource it to.”
Rohan Gupta · 2008
Their first approaches to two venture investors also came back empty. The sector was unfamiliar. Eventually, IndoUS Venture Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson backed Attero with $6.3 million. Funding supported research and the integrated Roorkee facility. The lesson is specific enough to borrow: before copying a foreign business model, find out who expects to be paid, and which essential partners actually exist.
The chemistry earns its keep
Attero’s expertise lies in taking mixed, complicated material and extracting useful outputs. Mechanical processing and hydrometallurgy work together; chemistry continues the job after physical separation. The company recovers battery materials and metals including lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, copper, silver and gold. Its rare-earth work targets neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium, materials important to magnets used in electronics, electric vehicles and wind energy.
Attero reports battery-material recovery above 98% and purity above 99.9%. Those numbers describe different things: recovery concerns how much material is retrieved; purity concerns the quality of the resulting material. Neither is a promise about every discarded object. The commercial question is whether recovered output meets a buyer’s requirements.
Company-reported performance, reiterated in September 2026.
In September 2026, Attero operationalised a Greater Noida research centre with recognition from India’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Reporting put its portfolio above 50 granted patents, with more than 200 filings worldwide. Research has been part of the business from its early chemical and metallurgical hiring. The new centre gives that habit a dedicated place to develop processes for increasingly difficult inputs.
The scrap dealer gets an app
A process cannot recover anything from a laptop still sitting in someone’s cupboard. Attero therefore built another kind of technology. Selsmart, launched in July 2024, buys old household electronics and arranges doorstep collection. MetalMandi, launched in January 2025, addresses scrap dealers and businesses with listings, live pricing, pickup and payments.
MetalMandi uses AI for pricing and image-based scrap identification. The useful part is the transaction it helps complete. A supplier can list a quantity, see a price and organise collection. In April 2026, Attero reported more than 110,000 registered users, over 50,000 monthly active users and about 15,000 tonnes of monthly procurement. Downloads are interesting; tonnes tell you what a recycling plant can use.
A battery needs an afterlife
The customers change depending on which end of the chain you inspect. Households sell unwanted appliances. Enterprises need documented retirement of computers and servers. Electronics and vehicle manufacturers need routes for returned products and batteries. Industrial buyers need recovered materials they can put into production.
For a corporate IT team, Attero’s services include device valuation, data sanitisation or destruction, collection and certificates. Reusable equipment can be refurbished and resold. A laptop’s remaining value is not necessarily just its metal content. Keeping a useful device working can come before taking it apart.
MG Motor India announced a partnership with Attero in May 2021 for end-of-life EV battery reuse and recycling. Mahindra Last Mile Mobility followed with a battery partnership in 2023. Alternatives such as Lohum and BatX also pursue battery recovery. Attero’s distinctive combination brings electronics processing, enterprise IT retirement, collection platforms and materials recovery into the same business.
Follow the truck, then the money
In December 2025, Attero announced ₹150 crore for regional e-waste plants, copper recycling and research infrastructure. Pune, Bengaluru and Faridabad were named for new e-waste plants; Reengus for copper recycling. Shorter journeys to processing hubs are part of the logic. YourStory reported that internal cash accruals and debt would finance the programme.
A separate ₹100 crore rare-earth expansion announced in June 2025 targeted annual capacity of 30,000 tonnes, up from 300. These are plans, not proof that every additional tonne is already being processed. By February 2026, Attero was discussing a broader ₹7,000 crore refining investment over five years.
The underlying constraint remains wonderfully stubborn. Scrap must be available, transport affordable and recovered materials saleable. Commodity prices and material quality change the arithmetic. Recycling also has a clock: today’s products become tomorrow’s feedstock. Attero cannot recover a battery that is still driving someone to work. Its opportunity begins when ownership ends - provided it has made that handover worth everyone’s while.