How NorthLadder is transforming trade-in into a circular economy marketplace

SecondaryMarket.news: Sandeep, let’s begin with the fundamentals. NorthLadder started as trade-in marketplace and you have now evolved into a circular economy marketplace. What drove this strategic transformation?

Sandeep Shetty: The change started with a very simple observation: the traditional trade-in model was broken. Retailers/ telcos were locked into long-term contracts, often three to five years, with a single vendor. That setup created an inherent conflict of interest. Vendors made more money when they offered retailers’ customers the lowest possible trade-in values. Once the contract was signed, the retailer had no recourse, limited transparency, and very little leverage.

We asked ourselves: why should a multi-billion-euro industry still operate like this? Instead of optimizing for one vendor’s margin, we wanted to create a system that maximizes value for retailers/ telcos and consumers by introducing competition, transparency, and technology. That was the birth of our marketplace vision.

SecondaryMarket.news: So essentially, the marketplace addresses the imbalance of power that exists in traditional models?

Sandeep Shetty: Exactly. The traditional vendor model primarily benefits the vendor, often at the expense of the retailer/telco or the consumer. With NorthLadder’s marketplace, multiple buyers compete for devices in real time. That bidding process naturally pushes trade-in prices higher, and the retailer is no longer at the mercy of a single vendor’s pricing strategy.

We’ve seen retailers achieve 20% to 30% better trade-in values because of this competition. And for consumers, that means higher payouts on their old devices, which in turn drives trade-in adoption and upgrades. Our platform gives the control back to retailers/ telcos and they now have the ability to define the number and definition of grades they want to buy devices in, margins and devices they wish to retain etc.

SecondaryMarket.news: One of the interesting aspects of your model is accessibility for smaller players. How does NorthLadder democratize the secondary market for, say, a corner shop in the Netherlands?

Sandeep Shetty: Historically, smaller retailers could not access trade-in supply. The technology barrier was just too high. Our platform removes that barrier. A retailer handling even 100 devices per month can now place mixed-SKU orders with full payment terms, shipment tracking, and visibility. Benefits previously reserved for the biggest trade-in buyers. We have built unique tech to enable this; the last mile retailer can buy devices on our platform similar to how you would buy stocks on Nasdaq.

Think of a corner shop in a city in the Netherlands like Rotterdam or Utrecht. With NorthLadder, they can tap into the same trade-in demand as a major operator and offer their prices directly to the trade-in customer, via the NorthLadder platform. That’s what technology should do: level the playing field and expand participation.

SecondaryMarket.news: Beyond trade-in, you talk about a multi-dimensional marketplace. Can you explain what that means?

Sandeep Shetty: Trade-in is just the entry point. The true circular economy requires marketplaces across multiple dimensions: grading, refurbishment, resale.

In grading, we integrate Apple diagnostics, several trade-in kiosk providers and our own AI-driven solutions. We can then work with the retailers/ telco to create a customer journey that suits their environment the best

In the future we will add multiple operating options.  For instance, for refurbishment, devices would be routed to the optimal repair centre, sometimes a local refurbisher in the Netherlands, sometimes a German facility that can handle bulk processing more efficiently.

By combining these verticals, we build an end-to-end ecosystem that mirrors the real lifecycle of a device, not just its trade-in value.

SecondaryMarket.news: Many telcos and retailers dream of building their own platforms but struggle with costs and complexity. How does NorthLadder’s white-label approach solve this?

Sandeep Shetty: It’s about recognizing reality. Building a marketplace platform is complex, expensive and time consuming. Most telcos and retailers simply cannot justify that investment or garner the resources to do that

Our white-label strategy allows an operator or retailer to offer a fully branded circular marketplace without building the underlying infrastructure. We supply the technology, operations, and ecosystem, while they retain branding, customer experience, and ownership of the relationship. After grading and processing, operators can keep devices they wish to resell themselves and use our B2B  last mile retailer platform to manage the disposal of products they cannot use, making our platform a truly circular solution.

It’s a Platform-as-a-Service model with complete transparency in pricing and operations, And just like Uber, we manage not only the technology but also the operational complexity, logistics, training, data wiping, and refurbisher coordination.

SecondaryMarket.news: Grading mismatches and online tradeins have traditionally been pain points for retailers/ telcos. What innovation has NorthLadder driven here?

We have leveraged automation in a way that solves a real business problem. Manual grading is the bane of this industry. Salespeople get penalised for grading mismatches, retailers/ operators lose money and customers get lower residual values. Through our marketplace approach of offering the best grading technologies, we can today offer a completely AI driven grading solution and consequently guaranteed prices. Customers walk away with a confirmed price, sales staff have no grading mismatch responsibility, and the retailer/ telco avoids all kinds of reconciliation effort. This alone is a game changer in improving customer and sales engagement

We have done several innovations in the omnichannel journey as well including tying up with last mile logistics providers and offering instant doorstep evaluation of devices in some markets

SecondaryMarket.news: You mentioned operations. Many technology companies underestimate the physical aspect of trade-in. How does NorthLadder handle that?

Sandeep Shetty: Absolutely. Technology is only half the story. The other half is execution. We manage pick-up, secure data erasure, logistics coordination, even training staff in retail stores.

Then there’s our service provider marketplace, where refurbishers, logistics companies, and other vendors compete to serve our clients. It’s not just about connecting systems; it’s about orchestrating an ecosystem. Think of a deployment model like SAP: it’s hands-on, consultative, and designed to optimize supply chain and attach rates and not just deliver software.

SecondaryMarket.news: Let’s turn to transparency, which you call a “revolution” in this industry. Why is it so central?

Sandeep Shetty: Because for decades, retailers and telcos have been operating in the dark. They know their buying price, but they don’t know what margin the vendor makes when reselling. Is it 30%? Is it 10%? That opacity has always favoured the vendor.

We flipped the model. On NorthLadder, both buying and selling prices are fully visible. Fees are agreed upfront. Retailers regain control, and they can choose how many buyers they want, which grades they want to sell, and what buyer profiles they prefer. We facilitate, but we don’t control. That’s the difference.

SecondaryMarket.news: Financially, how does your model work compared to traditional vendors?

Sandeep Shetty: Traditional vendors hide their margin in resale. Retailers never know what the vendor made on the device. We take a fee-based commission approach. Retailers pay a service fee, service providers pay a commission, and both are transparent.

Our fees are deliberately lower than traditional vendor margins, because our scale and automation allow us to be profitable at lower rates. That dual-revenue stream, combined with transparency, creates trust. And it scales.

SecondaryMarket.news: Where does the platform stand today, and what’s the rollout timeline for full functionality?

Sandeep Shetty: The trade-in marketplace is fully operational, with multi-buyer bidding and integrated grading options live today. Over the next 12 months, we’ll launch the refurbishment marketplace and selling marketplace.

We’re already piloting white-label deployments with major clients, and our development pipeline is aligned to make this an end-to-end platform within a year. It’s ambitious, but the foundations are already proven.

SecondaryMarket.news: How do you see NorthLadder’s role in the broader consolidation of this industry?

Sandeep Shetty: Consolidation is inevitable. Retailers want fewer partners managing more of the lifecycle. Today, some of the largest telcos have just three or four people running device programs across ten countries. They cannot manage ten specialized vendors.

By consolidating trade-in, refurbishment and operations under one platform, we remove complexity for retailers and operators.

Closing thoughts

NorthLadder’s transformation from a trade-in marketplace into a full-scale circular economy marketplace represents more than just a business model evolution. It is an attempt to rewrite the rules of an industry long plagued by opacity, vendor lock-in, and uneven access. By integrating technology, operations, and transparency into a white-label platform, NorthLadder is not just challenging incumbents—it is redefining what trade-in and device lifecycle management could look like for the next decade.