Company: Thaely
Founder: Ashay Bhave
Website: https://thaely.com/
Business: Thaely is a footwear company who make trainers from worldwide waste, with each pair containing 15 bags and 22 bottles.
About Ashay and Thaely
Thaely is a footwear company founded by 23-year-old Ashay Bhave. He developed the business as a design exercise to develop an ethically-produced trainer made entirely from recycled waste materials. 100 billion plastic bags are used each year, consuming 12 million barrels of non-renewable oil and killing 100,000 marine animals a day. Thaely aims to develop stylish trainers while also finding a solution to this huge global waste problem.
It took two years for Bhave to develop a sustainable fabric made from worldwide plastic waste, and then prototype the trainers. Bhave presented at Amity University Dubai’s 2019 Eureka startup pitch competition, Thaely Shoes was awarded first place. The company received funding, and they were able to produce a second prototype. This prototype aimed to make a production-ready sample, developed in Dubai. This was then perfected to make a production-ready sample. Each pair of Thaely trainers now contains 15 bags and 22 bottles. worth of plastic. All components of the trainers are vegan, including the glue.
The soles of Thaely trainers are made from ethically sourced natural rubber, which is a much less harmful alternative to conventionally-sourced rubber, which harms rubber trees. The shoes are packaged in reusable totes, which themselves are made from 4 plastic bottles. The box they come in is made from recycled paper embedded with seeds and dyed with waste coffee grounds, and can be planted in your garden to grow basil.
Thaely recently beat 196 applicants and became one of the winners of the Majid Al Futtaim Launchpad Accelerator Programme, done in partnership with Astrolabs and Microsoft.
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