Mumbai, India: Intellecap has launched the Circular Apparel Innovation Factory (CAIF) in partnership with the DOEN Foundation. The DOEN Foundation, a Dutch foundation funded by the National Postcode Lottery in the Netherlands, supports socially inclusive, creative, and green initiatives; and inspires pioneers to demonstrate that a new, circular economy can be put into practice. The DOEN partnership with Intellecap is an important step to accelerate the transition towards a greener, more efficient and less wasteful textile and apparel sector in India.

A circular apparel industry — one that moves away from the current ‘take-make-dispose’ production and consumption system — requires systemic shifts involving stakeholders across the value chain. Value chain actors like brands, retailers and manufacturers can play a critical role as innovation and R&D partners, buyers, or even strategic investors to provide an important scaling pathway for circular innovations. At the same time, enterprises that are pioneering new innovations can offer the agility that large value chain players need to innovate and push the innovation boundary. Large brands, retailers and manufacturers however, require flexibility, patience and support to successfully integrate enterprise-driven innovations into their value chain. There is hence a need to create market infrastructure and facilitate connections between enterprises and large brands, retailers and manufacturers in order to move the needle in the Indian apparel industry.

Intellecap will leverage its experience in driving collaborative industry action and its deep connections with innovators and enterprises to broker ‘unusual alliances.’ As part of CAIF, Intellecap will create an open source diagnostic toolkit to help enterprises identify the relevance of their circular business solutions to the textile and apparel value chain. From reclaiming CO2 to make dye, and producing fabrics with alternative fibers like hemp or banana plant waste, to innovative reuse and recycling models, the 3 year CAIF initiative will prototype circular value chain solutions with brands and manufacturing houses and demonstrate case studies that can nudge the industry to adopt these innovations at scale.

Vikas Bali, CEO, Intellecap, says, “The global fashion industry creates 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually, and with India being the second largest textile and apparel producer in the world – we believe this initiative will lead the apparel ecosystem on to a greener, more efficient path. Intellecap, together with its partners, will scale innovations and foster collaboration that can make the apparel industry more sustainable and circular. We are excited to work with DOEN Foundation on this initiative. Together we can help the industry embrace new technologies, practices and business models and most importantly, adopt a totally new mindset.”