Kyiv-based CleanTech Startup GreenAge Launch New b2b2c Product

 

Ukrainian GreenAge, after successful testing of the MVP with 67 well-known Kyiv restaurants, is preparing to launch its new b2b2c product, called sort, the world’s first pre-paid digitized waste management service. Task #1 is to make the city a better place to live.

There are two pain points in the industry that CEO Artem Myrhorodskyi and his team set out to solve:

1. Pollution of nature: More than 90% of waste is dumped in landfills or incineration plant.
2. Lack of infrastrucure: Most Kyivans are ready to sort waste, but they do not have a convenient infrastructure. In the city of 3 million people, there is not a single container for the disposal of food scraps (the main pollutant).

More than 400,000 Kyiv residents are separating some part of waste. However, they do this to the extent that the infrastructure and private recycling companies allow. The successful experience of serving restaurants stimulated the sort team to offer a product that can be used simultaneously by the business audience (HoReCa, business centres, supermarkets) and residents of high-rise buildings, passers-by. Company boasts of reputable names about clients that started separating waste with them – goodwine, First Line Group, Musafir, 100 rokiv tomu vpered, honey, Domino’s and dozens others.

• In 2020, the founder of the company, Artem Myrhorodsky, won a Ukrainian Startup Fund grant for the development of the BioBin project, which led the team to the CleanTech industry and gave notion of the market and customer pains. A career start in the restaurant business helped Artem connect the two target audiences of the sort.
• sort plans to serve as a recycling operator without running its own logistics and processing. As an operator, the company will not own a fleet or recycling facilities. For this, all contractors have already been negotiated and preselected.
• Marketers in the sort team decided to add a sort-to-earn function to the mobile application. All users who pay for access to the bins will be generating eco coins to be easily swapped for food and drinks at their favourite restaurants.
• Compost soil is produced at organic farm located near Kyiv. Restaurants will be able to buy vegetables and herbs grown on these fertile soils. In this way, a circular economy within the city will be ensured.
• Currently, the team is testing the hardware in Rivne and coding the app in Dnipro. The war scattered members to different cities and countries.
• Meanwhile, Ukraine took a course for post-war rebuild with substantial green technologies use. The Cabinet of Ministers approved the Waste Management Strategy 2030, in which it undertook to comply with EU recycling roadmap. Despite the war, in July 2022, the Parliament adopted the framework Law on waste management, which established new rules of the game in the field and pushed for reform.

Fundraising for pre-seed stage has become a much harder challenge in 2022. Unfortunately, we lost our lead investor after Russians started the aggressive war in Ukraine and now are pitching with Ukrainian and European funds and programs, – CEO Artem Myrhorodsyi.