Our Story
Inspired by humans. Powered by tech.
Our smartphones do so much for us. They bring us closer to people, things, places, ideas, experiences— you name it. They even bring us closer to our next smartphone. And our next one. And the one after that. And so on. But what happens each time we switch devices for a newer model? We collect our own personal collection of devices. Believe us, we checked: around 1 billion smartphones are left unused! So, whether it’s hidden away somewhere in our house or buried in a junkyard, it’s still e-waste that needs to be managed in a sustainable way.
This may not come as news 🤷♂️
Do you know what did come as a surprise to us? If everything can be done in a matter of minutes from the smartphone in our hands (and we will most likely find to be outdated in a year or so) shouldn’t there be a convenient and sustainable way to get rid of used, broken, or outdated smartphones? I mean, we couldn’t grasp the idea that there was no easy way to do it. Just like there’s a real-time way to do practically anything from a smartphone there must be a—— AHA! Right there and then, 2020 became the year of Pandas 🎉We set out, myself and Alex Vratskides, (my partner in trade-in) to craft a software solution allowing users to automatically trade in a smartphone, get paid for it while also benefiting the planet.
This solution was destined to work through a custom wireless identification process, eradicating all the hassle and awkwardness of hand-to-hand trade-ins or long waits on offer updates and evaluations. From day one of our Research and Development, we devoted ourselves to streamlining the entire process making it super-fast and easy every step of the way. We were so obsessed, we told ourselves we had to make it work in 5 minutes. So we got it down to 3’ 🤘 And that was only the beginning... Next, stop? Make trade-in available to as many people as possible, by partnering with retailers and creating frictionless user journeys across channels through next-gen tech and AI.
Just like that (almost automagically) we became a team of 30 awesome Pandas 🙌 with 70 locations in 7 cities and two countries, within our very first year. And in that very year, approximately 10,000 trade-ins later, we saved 650 tons of CO2e and 1.8 tons of e-waste.
Humankind may have a long way to go when it comes to processing e-waste but we are determined to do our part one trade-in at a time, making the latest technology accessible to more and more people.
Fanis Koutouvelis
Founder of Pandas