City Girl Develops Unique Goods Disposal Platform

What began as a personal inconvenience for a college student has quickly evolved into one of the most promising student-led startups to emerge from Nagpur. When Avika Khemuka found herself leaving behind nearly ₹15,000 worth of unused goods at the end of a semester – simply because there was no reliable way to sell them within the campus – she decided to build a solution. The result is CampusSwap, a peer-to-peer marketplace designed exclusively for college students. This is the first such startup in the country and is completely free for onboarded students to use.

In just 73 days of active outreach, CampusSwap has crossed the milestone of over 400 verified users, achieved without spending a single rupee on advertising. The platform’s growth has been driven entirely through grassroots engagement, including targeted messages in college WhatsApp groups and QR code-based registrations at drives conducted directly on campuses. Founded by Nagpur girl Khemuka, now in final year B.Tech student in Computer Science at SRM University, Haryana, the platform addresses a long-standing gap in India’s student ecosystem – the lack of a trusted, closed marketplace where students can safely buy and sell second-hand goods within their own campus communities.

CampusSwap enables users to trade in a wide range of items, including engineering equipment, medical equipment, electronics, hostel furniture, appliances, cycles, and sports gear. To ensure trust and exclusivity, every user is required to upload a valid college ID, which is verified using an OCR-based system powered by Google Cloud Vision API. The startup secured seed support from investors.

Ten Nagpur & Pune colleges already onboard

Looking ahead, CampusSwap is preparing to expand its presence through direct engagement at educational institutions. The team has lined up onboarding drives across 10 colleges in Nagpur and Pune, including IT Nagpur, Government College of Engineering (GCOE), Chavan College of Engineering (YCCE), Symbiosis Institute of Technology, and Cummins College of Engineering, Pune, among others. A place at Symbiosis SIT Tank 20 in Nagpur and was also showcased at Startup Mahakumbh in Delhi, where the team engaged with investors and mentors from across the country.

CampusSwap is registered under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) as part of the Central Government’s Startup India initiative. Notably, the venture is led by an all-women founding team – an aspect that has attracted attention within the startup ecosystem and among potential investors. Among its key features is the “Wanted Posts” option, allowing buyers to post specific requirements and receive responses from sellers. The team is also developing “SafeSwap Delivery,” a logistics-backed solution to facilitate inter-campus transactions securely. With 100 Indian universities and 40,000 plus colleges and if the entire student community decides to log onto the system, its canvas could arguably be unrivalled.