With Tooused, you can recycle old clothes and earn credits
New Delhi-based sustainability startup Tooused helps recycle apparel and accessories to keep waste out of landfills and mitigate the climate impact of fast fashion.
It is often said in social circles that good things happen when you least expect them. This rings especially true for the sustainability startup Tooused, which, strangely enough, was born out of an argument.
Recalling the incident, Founder and CEO Mayank Singh says, “My wife and I got into an argument and started blaming each other for not taking care of our old clothes. Eventually, I realised how common the situation was in households. I was researching the sustainability space and decided to do something about it.”
In 2023, Singh joined hands with Co-founder and CBO Ayush Saxena to launch the New Delhi-based startup.
Tooused aims to offer an easy and convenient way to recycle unwanted clothing, accessories, household items, and more, and keep waste out of landfills. In exchange, it offers people Tooused Credits, which can be redeemed for cash or rewards at a wide range of retailers.
India has experienced significant growth in fast fashion, driven by rising disposable incomes, a fashion-conscious youth, and the emergence of online shopping platforms. The country’s fast fashion market, valued at approximately $10 billion in 2024, is expected to grow 5X to reach $50 billion by FY31, according to Fibre2Fashion.
The rapid turnover of fashion trends leads Indians to frequently buy and dump clothes and accessories, with the cycle of overproduction and overconsumption worsening landfill overload.
Singh says when he first decided to recycle clothing from his household, he noticed that some NGOs (in the business) were about 12-15km away—too far to establish any regularity.
“Additionally, I know that many of us give our clothes to domestic help. While the donation makes us feel good, we are never sure if they actually use them. This was the larger problem that we wanted to mitigate,” he says, adding, “We wanted to build a convenient system so people could give away their old clothes for recycling.”
At present, Tooused has a 15-member team and a 4,500 sq. ft. textile facility in New Delhi. The startup’s name comes from how folks colloquially refer to old apparel as “too used”.
Getting started
Singh says the first challenge was the Indian utilitarian mindset. “In most households, clothes always end up being used even after people stop wearing them. Most often, they’re turned into cleaning rags.”
The founder first tested the idea with his neighbours. When they reaffirmed his expectations that they had a lot of unused old clothes, he asked if they were open to donating them. Most of them did, but with an expectation of returns—in whatever form.
“We decided to build an incentivisation mechanism for the donation process. Now, whenever someone donates, they receive Tooused credits that can be converted into vouchers, coupons, or cashback,” he explains.
The startup is also in the process of launching a feature that will allow users to convert those credit points into money that will be donated to an NGO or towards planting a tree.
Soon, Tooused began targeting residential societies with at least 1,000 apartments in the Delhi-NCR region. “We rolled out a feedback form to 6,000 people and received over 5,000 responses. It confirmed what we suspected—people keep ordering clothes online every two to three months and always need to declutter their wardrobes. So, we developed an app to streamline the process,” Singh explains.
The Tooused app is functional across 18,000 pin codes across India. Anyone living in these pin codes can order a pickup of their old clothes, with a pickup fee ranging from Rs 149 to Rs 219. It also has a wardrobe organising service, for which it charges a base rate of Rs 299 (Rs 349 for ironing clothes).
Additionally, the company has partnered with fulfilment centres in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Kolkata to reduce operational costs.
So far, Tooused has channelled over one lakh clothing items, with over 5,000 of them channelled back in the circular value chain. Some of its clients include BluPine Energy and Chaayos, among others.
Process and services
Tooused has built its segregation, tracing, and tracking process in its textile facility, where clothes are processed. Those in usable condition are shared among Tooused’s network of 10,000 distributors and buyers across North India, integrated in different Tier II and III cities.
“The minimum requirement for the clothing items is that they should be in decent condition and without any stubborn stains,” Singh adds.
The facility is also working to create a social impact for the Waghri community. “Its people are known for helping in recycling waste materials across cities. However, it has become tougher for Waghris to get access to households since people started shifting into gated societies,” Singh says.
The startup decided to employ members of this community in its textile facility. “Twelve of our workers, who comprise 60% of the workforce, are Waghris; the rest are from other communities. Advances in technology have made work easier for them as well.”
Tooused is also developing in-house technology to extract cotton from any clothing item, allowing it to be directly converted into sustainable products. The startup has applied for a patent and is presently awaiting approval.
The company operates on business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) models—decluttering wardrobes of individuals, and recycling those materials into corporate gifting items and more. It collaborates with various brands to help them transition their workforce’s clothing to apparel made from recycled cotton.
“We did such a project with Chaayos recently. Their corporate and in-store teams will soon wear clothing made out of recycled cotton. We want to reduce the use of polyester,” he says.
Recycled cotton t-shirts cost somewhere between Rs 399 and Rs 599—the same as average synthetic t-shirts. The co-founder says, “We also provide a sustainable packaging service to B2B clients. We have signed purchase orders for 5 lakh sustainable t-shirts, and 24 lakh packaging boxes for the next two years, amounting to Rs 8.6 crore.”
Tooused is also in the process of partnering with a brand that will introduce a line of sustainable clothing to consumers. The startup also plans to open manufacturing lines in Gujarat, South India, and East India to ensure it can dispose of and recycle clothes more efficiently.
It is also collaborating with content creators to promote its visibility.
Funding and growth
Tooused had raised Rs 30 lakh in a friends-and-family funding round in its earlier days. It plans to raise a seed round of Rs 4 crore, which Singh expects to close “by the end of this year”.
With investments of almost Rs 80 lakh to date, the company reported a revenue of around Rs 31 lakh in FY25 and amassed a 4% profit in its first year of operation. It aims to reach Rs 4.5 crore in FY26.
“About 65% of our revenue is driven by B2C operations; the rest comes from B2B. By FY27, we are planning to hit Rs 15 crore,” Singh says.
The startup indirectly competes with Bengaluru-based FreeUp and also NGOs, but since organisations falling in the latter category are part of its ecosystem, they are not considered competitors.
Edited by Suman Singh
