Before venture funding, before policy panels, before being named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in Social Impact, Amrita Bhasin ’23 was observing and questioning the world around her.
As a child, visiting family in India, she remembers heaps of clothing outside factories and warehouses. Not a stray pile here or there, but entire landscapes of excess clothing. Inventory produced for distant markets, discarded before far-away consumers could see it. Those early images reshaped how she understood consumption. They also shaped her future.
At the University of California, Berkeley, Amrita studied sociology, drawn to its ability to examine systems, power, and behavior at scale. Berkeley’s nationally ranked program appealed to her intellectual curiosity, but what stayed with her most was not a statistic. It was a framework. Sociology taught her to question who benefits from a system, who absorbs its costs, and what invisible structures drive visible outcomes.
Today, she applies that questioning and examination of systems to an industry many consumers rarely think about: reverse logistics.
The Hidden Cost of Excess
Retail runs on prediction. Brands forecast demand months in advance, then manufacture, ship, warehouse, and distribute. And when forecasts don’t play out, as they often don’t, inventory sits. Or worse, it’s discarded.
Amrita points to the scale of the issue: unsold inventory is an $800 billion problem globally. A significant portion of overstock ends up in landfills each year. Beyond the financial inefficiency lies an environmental one. Logistics and freight are among the most energy-intensive industries in the world. Overproduction compounds emissions, waste, and contamination.
For Amrita, the connection is clear. Climate change is not an isolated environmental crisis. The crisis is woven through decisions made, into supply chains, purchasing behavior, and industrial planning. The resulting waste, chemical runoff, and pollution, disproportionately impact communities in the Global South, where waste, chemical runoff, and pollution are often concentrated.
Her response was not to critique the system from the outside. Instead she built within it.
She co-founded Sotira, a company that enables retailers and brands to discreetly offload and monetize unsold inventory rather than sending it to landfills. The model creates secondary channels that reduce waste while protecting brand equity. Circularity, in this case, is not abstract. It is operational.
Berkeley as an Ecosystem of Ideas
Amrita’s path to entrepreneurship was not linear. As a Berkeley student, she immersed herself in opportunities that stretched far beyond her major.
She participated in the Big Ideas Challenge and won a prize, an early affirmation that social impact and business innovation could coexist. She enrolled in courses through the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, exploring topics ranging from industrial engineering and operations research to alternative proteins. She joined competitions through Entrepreneurs at Berkeley, where she won first place and secured funding support. Across campus, she received grants for social impact innovation.
Berkeley was not just a classroom. It was a testing ground.
It was also where she met her cofounder and CTO, Gary Kwong, during freshman year. They collaborated on projects throughout college, building trust and technical fluency long before launching Sotira. The company did not emerge overnight. It grew out of shared experiments, shared questions, and shared ambition.
What distinguishes Amrita’s story is not just early achievement. It is an intellectual range. As a sociology major, she deliberately crossed disciplines, taking classes in micro-mobility civil engineering, Web3 and crypto, and creative writing. She believes that entrepreneurship, especially in social impact sectors, demands interdisciplinary thinking. Systems rarely fit neatly within departmental boundaries. Neither should solutions.
A Generation at the Table
In boardrooms and conference halls, Amrita often finds herself the youngest person in the room by at least a decade. She does not treat that as a barrier. She treats it as perspective.
She speaks frequently about representing a Gen Z voice in corporate and policy conversations. Younger consumers care deeply about sustainability, transparency, and values alignment. Those expectations are reshaping retail. They are also reshaping leadership.
Her work extends beyond startup operations into public policy. She has collaborated with organizations in Alameda County and engaged in discussions around California legislation such as SB 1383 and SB 707, policies aimed at reducing organic waste and improving environmental outcomes. California’s leadership in climate policy, she believes, sets a precedent that other states can follow.
In 2025, she served as a Delegate Speaker at the Circular Economy Plenary at the One Young World Summit in Munich, representing the United States in conversations with global leaders, activists, and innovators. The experience reinforced her view that climate dialogue must move beyond Western-centric frameworks. Solutions must account for global inequities. Climate change does not distribute its burdens evenly.
Silicon Valley can feel insular, she notes. International engagement challenges that insulation. It demands broader thinking and bipartisan collaboration.
Recognition as Milestone, Not Destination
Being named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Social Impact category marked a visible milestone. For Amrita, it also signaled collective effort. She speaks about customers, investors, advisors, and policy partners as essential contributors to Sotira’s progress. Building a company, she says, takes a village.
The recognition reflects tangible impact: enabling supply chain teams to handle overstock more efficiently, diverting waste from landfills, and embedding sustainability into operational decisions. Yet she frames success as ongoing work rather than completion. Circularity remains a long-term challenge. Waste reduction is iterative. Policy evolves. Markets shift.
Growth, for her, includes scaling Sotira to serve more Fortune 500 companies while deepening engagement in sustainability policy conversations. Media appearances and conference stages amplify the message, but the underlying focus remains practical change within supply chains.
Staying Grounded
Rapid growth can distort perspective. Amrita counters that with curiosity.
She reads widely. She follows global news closely. She continues to evaluate challenges through a sociological lens, asking how systems interact and who is affected. She maintains a strong network of founders in the Bay Area, along with family and friends who provide stability beyond professional milestones.
She is acutely aware that climate work is unfinished. That awareness keeps ambition tethered to responsibility.
Advice for Berkeley Students
Her guidance to current Berkeley students is pragmatic. Study what genuinely interests you. For entrepreneurship or social impact careers, a major does not rigidly dictate trajectory. Diverse academic exposure strengthens creative problem-solving.
She encourages students to take classes outside their comfort zones, to explore departments unrelated to their declared field, and to use Berkeley’s breadth intentionally. Exposure to engineering, policy, humanities, and emerging technologies can intersect in unexpected ways.
For Amrita, sociology did not limit her. It sharpened her.
A Systems Thinker in a Systems Industry
From childhood observations of textile waste in India to Berkeley classrooms, to venture-backed innovation in the Bay Area, Amrita Bhasin’s journey reflects continuity rather than contrast. She is still examining systems. Still questioning inefficiencies. Still focused on how invisible processes shape visible outcomes.
The difference now is scale.
Supply chains move billions of products. Policy shapes billions of dollars. Consumer behavior influences billions of decisions. Within that complexity, she has chosen a specific entry point: unsold inventory.
It is not the most glamorous corner of the retail world. It is one of the most consequential.
For Amrita, a Cal alum trained to see patterns beneath the surface, that is precisely the point.
