We were trying to fix climate change. We ended up fixing how hardware gets sourced in India

OnlyScrews grew out of a frustration most hardware builders know well but rarely talk about. This is how it happened.

It started with a very different and noble idea

Before OnlyScrews existed, Inderan, Atul, Dhruv, and the team were working on something they genuinely believed could matter at scale. They had started Climec Labs, a climate tech startup focused on direct-air carbon capture and storage, and were building their flagship product: the Aerem Model A.

The Aerem was a different kind of air purifier. It combined a HEPA filter with a microalgae-based biofilter, using living microorganisms that produced 22 trees worth of oxygen and 6 trees worth of CO2 removal. This earned the team a Best Youth-Led Changemaker Award and recognition from both private as well as government-backed initiatives. They were getting somewhere real.

To learn more about this journey, visit climeclabs.com

The team worked and was funded by India’s and the world’s most respected startup ecosystems:

• IIM Bangalore (pre-incubated)
• IIT Kanpur
• SRM Institute of Science and Technology

The part nobody talks about when building hardware

Designing the Aerem was the work the team had signed up for. The research, the prototyping, the engineering decisions, that was expected to be hard, and it was. What they didn't expect was how much time would disappear into something far more mundane — finding the right screws.

Sourcing specific fasteners for a custom prototype in India was a genuinely painful process. Suppliers had minimum order quantities of 100 to 200 pieces, even when a team needed twelve. Niche sizes were nearly impossible to find locally. Buying small quantities meant paying disproportionately high prices, if you could find what you needed at all. And the hours spent searching, comparing, calling suppliers, and waiting added up in ways that quietly killed momentum.

The team started asking around at the incubation centres. Were other startups dealing with this too? The answer was consistent: robotics teams, automotive prototypers, hardware startups, DIY builders, everyone had a version of the same story. A project delayed because of a component that should have taken an afternoon to source.

This was a gap that the hardware ecosystem had simply learned to live with instead of solving.

From realisation to something real

At some point, Inderan decided to go find the sensors himself. He went to Chawri Bazaar in Delhi, one of India’s oldest hardware markets, and spent time understanding the supply side. He came back and told Atul what he had found. Atul’s instinct was immediate: put it online. Atul observed a niche market gap and wanted to experiment with it. We started the experiment and called it Project Onlyscrews, inspired from Chawri Bazaar’s line “स्क्रू ही स्क्रू” (which later turned out to be our brand name, “OnlyScrews”). He listed a focused set of fasteners on Shopify and made them available in small quantities, without the friction of bulk orders or supplier negotiations.

The response told them what they needed to know. Startups found it useful. So did DIY enthusiasts and 3D printing communities who had been quietly dealing with the same sourcing headaches. What Atul had put together on a hunch, and what Inderan had sourced by walking the lanes of Chawri Bazaar and Parry’s, turned out to be exactly what a lot of people had been looking for.

In June 2024, OnlyScrews was launched. The catalogue grew as the orders did. More categories, more customers, more use cases than they had originally anticipated.

Four problems solved through one platform

Hardware procurement in India has four problems that nobody has properly fixed yet. These are the ones we are building toward:

Our vision for the long run

OnlyScrews today carries 30+ categories of hardware and serves everyone from individual hobbyists to industrial buyers. The long-term goal hasn't changed since day one: to become the platform that the hardware and manufacturing supply chain in India can actually depend on.

The journey began with a team trying to improve the air we breathe. Along the way, they uncovered something that had been quietly holding back builders and manufacturers across the country.

Sometimes, solving a large problem means first solving the small one that keeps getting in the way.

We are just getting started with our journey and we might have a rebranding move somewhere along the way. Do let us know if you think we should rebrand, we like to hear the feedback from our customers at founders.office@onlyscrews.in

Join our team by filling this form: https://forms.gle/16EoB71Up1uhu6VQ6