Hi, I'm Vince Molinari, and welcome to FinTech TV.
We're broadcasting from the iconic New York Stock Exchange, and my guest today is Nitin Gupta, who is the CEO and co-founder of Atao.
Nitten is a clean tech visionary leading India's largest e-waste and the world's most advanced lithium battery and rare earth magnets recycling firm.
He's an alumnus of IIT Delhi and NYU Stern, and he's driving global circular economy goals with patented tech and impact.
Wow.
This and that is, that is amazing.
Getting through that introduction with all the amazing things you're doing was was a big mouthful, but there's so much behind that.
Well, first off, welcome to the New York Stock Exchange and FinTech TV.
Well, thank you for having us here, Vince.
It's a pleasure speaking to you today.
Well, great.
So much to unpack, if you would, from that introduction and everything that you're doing at Otero.
Maybe for our audience who isn't familiar with Otero.
Give us a little background on what the vision has been.
Sure.
So Vince Otero is a deep tech company.
With a very strong focus on sustainability as a company today, we have more than 46 granted global patents on various recycling technologies developed by us in India.
Patents are across the US, Europe, and Asia, and more than 200 filed for.
We're also the only critical minerals extraction company in the world to generate carbon credits per ton of waste recycled.
Our carbon methodology is based on the fact that in a process, the amount of energy it takes to extract, let's say, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper, aluminum from electronic waste recycling or lithium carbonate, cobalt, nickel graphite from battery recycling or rare earths from magnet recycling is significantly lower compared to the energy used in extracting these metals or minerals from virgin mining or any other known secondary source today.
So that's from unpacking a little bit stuff perspective, and we're driving the change.
Our vision is that we should be able to make an impact on reducing the dependence on mining and increasing the dependence on urban mining, which is what is doing by collecting discarded stuff, recycling it using globally best technology, and putting it back in the circular economy.
Well, this is going to be my master class, I think in education from you and I can already see we probably have about 5 episodes that we should be doing just on the introduction.
But taking a step back, you know, when we look at rare earths, critical minerals, so important to the planet, you're taking a leading role in reducing the dependency on extracting new, going through this recycling process.
Talk to me a little bit about the importance not only now but as the future is consuming more and more rare earth and critical minerals, how do we how do we preserve and what are you doing at Otero to kind of lead the charge?
So essentially winds.
Critical minerals and rare earths today are used in almost every sphere of our life.
For example, rare earth magnets are used in speakers.
They're used in consumer electronics like a laptops, cell phones, what have you.
They're used in compressors which go in your washing which go in your refrigerators and let's say sort of air conditioners.
They're used in vehicles, both EV as well as non-EV vehicles.
So a significant amount of rare earths are basically used in every aspect of our life on a daily basis.
All of these rare earths today, the supply chain is dependent on mining and refining.
Refining largely happens in China.
So globally, given the uncertainty of supply chain and geopolitical stress that's playing out, more and more regulators around the world are trying to figure out how can the supply chain be domesticated in nature.
That's where urban mining or recycling plays a role.
That's where a company like Aterro plays a role.
We have today the best technology possible in the world to be able to collect all of this end of life lithium batteries or electronic waste or a magnets, recycle them at the most highest efficiency possible.
For example, today we are recycling more than 97% and extracting more than 97% of pure battery grade lithium carbonate.
We're extracting more than 98% of pure battery grade alt.
Extracting more than 98% of battery grade.
These are extraordinary extraction rates, you know, my mind is racing while you're explaining this because I'm beginning to understand really the vertical and horizontal integration of aero where you're benefiting the planet by having less extraction.
You're creating somehow on the back end of this a carbon credit which is just a whole other element that I'd love to dive into, but really that recycling aspect at such a high rate of 97 98%, I never would have thought as a layperson that would be anywhere near that.
So so that that recycling and repurposing economically from a sustainability standpoint, but you know I I don't want to go too far into it and tell me if I'm wrong, but when you start to think about national security and sovereignty of sourcing that from recycling versus having to outsource or import has got to be a very powerful thing.
Absolutely.
And, please understand, Vince, that the materials that come out of recycling, let's say a tails facilities, are same as they come out of virgin mining.
From a mechanical property perspective, from a metallurgical property perspective, from a chemical property perspective, from a physical property perspective, there is no difference, right?
So it's absolutely the same.
Now the advantage is that you're not relying on imported supply chain for these materials, you're basically using the scrap that's getting generated.
Collecting it, using technology and extracting all these metals, right?
So it's great from a national security perspective.
It's great from a self-dependence on energy perspective.
You're not dependent on any of these materials, on any factor which is not in your control.
Well, just, you know, the scope of it continues to really just excite me when I think about it and I never thought about, I'd say the efficiency.
I would think in my mind that a recycled component of rare earth would be less powerful, perhaps, right?
But you know, to look at that ratio of recovery and then have the same power to it is incredible.
So why would you want to extract natively when you can recycle at that level?
And I guess that's the next component really that differentiating of how you're achieving this is because of technology that you've created and I think it goes back to somewhat 40 some odd I think it was.
So talk to me a bit about the technology and the power of it and how differentiating that is.
So the tech is pretty differentiated essentially the technology uses innovative mechanical engineering factors.
It includes innovative metallurgical processes and includes innovative chemical processes, and then it comes together.
The technology for electronic waste recycling is different from lithium battery recycling, is different from rare earth man recycling.
But the basic framework is still the same across all three of these different networks, right, and the tech is highly differentiated.
The tech not only is able to recycle all these end of life materials but can also take intermediate output from a mine and produce pure materials.
So as an example, today, let's say there is a lithium mine in the US, hard rock mine, which basically produces.
Intermediate product which goes to China where it is refined into battery grade lithium carbonate, so a stack can take that intermediate lithium mining product, put it into a refining process, and extract the same quality.
So it's not only recycling but also using the mining extract to refine.
Again, I have to already invite you back for another episode because we're gonna rapidly run out of time and there's so much more that I want to learn about and our audience is going to be particularly excited about this episode.
Uh, so, so we talk about the technology.
What comes to mind to me, it is uh.
I would think the ability to globalize the technology because if you could do it at that scale in India, why not anywhere else in the world?
Absolutely.
And that's what we're working on today, Vince.
We are already the largest company in India.
We are a profitable company.
We are growing 100% year on year.
Small growth.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
And now we're looking at globalization, we're looking at setting up facilities in the US and other parts of the world as well.
You know, before we have to jump, you know.
We talked a little bit about traceability and supply chain.
So is it too far of a reach to be to think about, you can, and I don't know if the word is certify or brand within the traceability, the source of your recycled nature, which you know I think changes the paradigm of so many abuses that we may see in mining, whether that's you know human labor violations. or environmental where people would naturally want to buy something that is sourced a bit differently.
Yeah, absolutely.
So at least in our process using AI and blockchain, the entire supply chain is traceable and transparent right from where the input was picked up from, which facility it went to for recycling, what products came out of it, and there is a complete supply chain that's 100% traceable and transparent.
Just when I thought you had it all covered, now you pull out the blockchain card mutability and the traceability, that's terrific.
Well, unfortunately we're going to have to come back and, well, fortunately come back another time, but we're going to have to end this episode.
But great cliffhanger where there's so much more information.
Congratulations to you and the Aterro team.
Sounds like amazing things going on.
Thank you, Vince's pleasure speaking to you.
It's our pleasure to have you.
