The Commercialisation Gap: Why Circular Products Stall Before They Scale

We have sat in a lot of rooms where a sustainable material worked, everyone agreed it worked, and nothing was ordered.

That gap — between a pilot that succeeds and a purchase order that follows — is where most circular economy businesses in India actually die. It is rarely the technology.

Procurement is a different department with a different job

A sustainability officer is measured on targets. A procurement officer is measured on cost, continuity of supply and risk. Those are not the same incentive, and a new biomaterial threatens all three of the second set.

So the meeting where everyone is enthusiastic is often not the meeting that decides. We would argue most founders in this space are pitching the wrong department, brilliantly.

What changes the answer is usually boring: a second source of supply, a quality specification that matches the existing one, a pilot that does not require the line to stop, and someone willing to carry the risk of the first order.

The money is available but the shape is wrong

Venture capital funds growth. The commercialisation gap needs something else — capital that de-risks a buyer's first order rather than a seller's next hire.

Blended finance, demonstration grants and government pilot funding exist for exactly this, and in our experience are under-used because they are administratively tedious rather than unavailable. That is an unglamorous thing to be good at, and it is often the difference.

Credibility is a procurement requirement now

A buyer cannot adopt a material that might later be called greenwashing. The reputational risk transfers to them the moment it goes on their pack.

This is the part founders most often underestimate. Third-party verified lifecycle data is not a marketing asset. It is a prerequisite for the conversation, and the absence of it is a legitimate reason for a buyer to say no.

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What we are less sure about

We do not know how much of this is specific to India. Procurement conservatism looks similar in the UK and EU markets we work in, but the financing environment is different enough that the same business can stall for different reasons in each.

We are also aware that we see the businesses that come to us for help with the commercial side, which are disproportionately the ones already struggling with it. There may be a quieter set who never had this problem and whom we never meet.

Where we have got to

The founders we have watched cross this gap did not have better technology than the ones who did not. They had a better answer to the question of who carries the risk of going first.

If you are stuck between a successful pilot and a purchase order, we would be interested to hear where it is jamming — it is the part of this work we find most useful to compare notes on.