Concept: Chicago-based asset recovery startup Rheaply has built a B2B SaaS resource management and exchange platform to help organizations better visualize, quantify and utilize their physical assets. The startup intends to leverage the potential of a circular economy for net-zero waste, reuse, sustainable procurement and inventory management, taking actions against climate change.

Nature of Disruption: Rheaply offers an end-to-end platform to enable companies to achieve remarkable savings through inventory sharing and management. It catalyzes circular economy through asset exchange management (AxM) – a platform that easily keeps track of inventory without relying on inadequate spreadsheets or complicated systems. AxM unlocks the value of underutilized assets by increasing discoverability and transparency of resources. Digital Marketplace – allows enterprises to buy, sell, trade, donate, and rent resources within the organization or externally throughout the network. The solution builds a comprehensive picture of asset utilization, enabling companies to view, download and share visualized waste diversion reports. Organizations need to register themselves on Rheaply’s platform. Using a resource-sharing network, they can browse and create a listing. Then they can either swap or sell the assets based on requirements.

Outlook: Asset visibility and utilization are one of the biggest problems in strategic asset management. Enterprises often fail to monitor and manage asset depreciation adequately, resulting in the purchase of duplicate assets, which significantly affects every organization’s bottom line. The excess surplus of inventory having unused assets leads to adding tons of waste to landfills. Rheaply’s SaaS-based AxM platform can scale reuse and the circular economy within organizations, helping lower procurement and storage costs, and reduce waste. The startup has raised $8M in Series A funding led by High Alpha, with investment from 100 Black Angels & Allies Fund, Concrete Rose Capital, Hyde Park Angels, Morgan Stanley Multicultural Innovation Lab, and Salesforce Ventures, among others. It has planned to invest the funds in carbon- and sustainability-related reporting features, implement user sharing controls and improve the user interface framework to support a materials marketplace.

This article was originally published in Verdict.co.uk