Exim Routes is a technology-enabled recycling infrastructure company that built a proprietary intelligence system to connect worldwide sources of recyclable materials with Indian paper mills - a supply chain no Indian company had meaningfully occupied before. It was founded in 2013 by an IIT Roorkee paper-engineering graduate who spent seven to eight years quantifying technical data on recycled paper grades from more than ten countries, assembling a dataset that management says no other trader in the world possesses. The recurring approach is to use that data as a moat: the company runs a high-volume trading engine that generates the cash and relationships, then layers a technology platform on top that makes the trading faster and cheaper, which in turn pulls in more volume - a flywheel built on information, not factories. # Business segments Three engines at different stages - a paper-recyclables trading cash cow, a services layer that rides on top of it, and an AI platform under construction that is already making the core business more efficient - each built with the cash flows and relationships of the one before. ## 1. Paper recyclables trading: where the group’s cash and relationships come from **The company sources waste paper from more than 25 countries and sells it to over 30 Indian mills, earning a margin on every tonne by solving the quality, logistics and credit problems that mills and overseas suppliers cannot solve for each other.** - **Proprietary data is the pricing edge** - the company has mapped product grades from more than ten countries over seven to eight years, so it knows what quality each mill needs and what each source can deliver, which lets it price accurately and shift sourcing quickly when a region is disrupted. - **Two transaction channels, one purpose** - in the Direct Model, overseas subsidiaries sell to Indian mills in dollars; in the High Seas Model, Exim India buys the goods while they are still on the water and resells in rupees, which mills prefer because it removes their dollar exposure and simplifies customs. About a quarter to 30% of sales happen on the high seas. - **Volume, not price, drives the business** - over 90% of recent revenue growth came from moving more tonnes, and the company is now handling almost 20,000 kilograms of recyclable material every hour across roughly 6,000 containers a year. - **Asset-light, but working-capital heavy** - the company carries no inventory and books sales only against orders, but it extends about two to three months of credit to mills while paying new suppliers in advance, which means growth consumes cash until supplier relationships mature and terms improve. - **Big mills, concentrated relationships** - the company deliberately works with the top 30 to 40 paper mills in India because each mill imports multiple products from different countries, and roughly half of revenue comes from the five largest customers. ## 2. Services: the higher-margin layer that rides on the trading engine **As the trading business grows, it pulls in logistics coordination, freight booking and consultancy work for subsidiaries and partners - services that earn fees at much higher margins than the physical product sales.** - **Logistics as a paid service** - the company books freight, handles documentation and customs coordination, and provides ad-hoc logistics support for Indian customers, earning service income on top of the underlying trade. - **Consultancy fees from its own network** - the UK subsidiary receives management consultancy fees for work including development of the ERIS platform, and the company provides operational planning, compliance and market insights to its global subsidiaries and key partners. - **Small today, strategic tomorrow** - the services segment is the smallest by revenue share, but the company’s stated plan is to grow it opportunistically alongside forex revenues and platform subscriptions, progressively improving the overall profit mix as the trading core expands. ## 3. ERIS platform: the intelligence system that makes the whole business faster **ERIS is a proprietary AI-powered operating system - not a standalone software product - that automates documentation, matches suppliers with mills, and gives the company visibility of nearly one million tonnes of inventory, roughly a fifth of the Indian import market.** - **From days to minutes** - before ERIS, a manual sale took two to three days; now the platform handles price discovery and logistics intelligence so the same process can happen in minutes, and documentation is fully automated. - **A marketplace that is deliberately not open** - management believes a plain digital marketplace fails in recyclables because mills and suppliers do not want to deal directly with each other; ERIS is built as a closed system that brings together data, logistics and operations while Exim Routes remains the trusted intermediary. - **Already improving the core business** - two mills that were onboarded to the procurement tool saw a 30% increase in their procurement rate with Exim Routes within five months, and the company’s underlying trading margin improved by three full percentage points, with efficiencies directly attributed to ERIS. - **A three-phase build** - Phase 1 is internal use and data collection; Phase 2, over the next 12 to 18 months, will onboard suppliers, logistics partners and financiers onto the platform to earn take rates and financing fees; Phase 3 is a full external platform where all parties transact. A major Indian lender has already been onboarded for invoice financing. # Group structure and partners **A parent company in India controls five overseas subsidiaries that do the sourcing and logistics, while more than 25 logistics partners move the physical goods - a structure built to navigate trade barriers and manage cross-border flows in multiple currencies.** - **Five subsidiaries, five geographies** - Exim Routes operates through wholly-owned entities in the USA, Singapore, the UK, Germany and South Africa, which handle procurement and logistics in their regions. The UK and Singapore subsidiaries were set up partly because trade barriers prevent direct import of waste paper into certain countries. - **A forex model that runs both ways** - the foreign subsidiary pays the supplier in dollars and the Indian mill pays Exim India in rupees, while the mill also pays the foreign subsidiary in dollars; profits are then transferred in rupees from India to the foreign subsidiary. - **Leadership drawn from industry and technology** - the founder is an IIT Roorkee graduate with over 16 years in the industry; the CFO is an IIT and INSEAD graduate and ex-McKinsey; the CTO is an IIT graduate and ex-OYO product builder; the Chief Business Officer brings 15-plus years in commodity trading.