A tech start-up that's fixing India's garbage problem

Saahas Waste Management, set up by former journalist Wilma Rodrigues, has received seed funding from the Indian Angel Network

Wilma Rodrigues, a German language translator, tour guide and former journalist, hated it when tourists complained to her about India’s garbage-ridden streets. So, she set up an NGO in the late 1990s to create awareness about keeping the environment clean in line with the government’s Swacch Bharat Abhiyan (“clean India programme” in Hindi).
 

Over a decade later, she realised that just educating people wasn’t enough. There was a need for concrete solutions, not just for stopping litterers, but also for processing waste. By then, there were several companies building high-tech infrastructure to recycle waste in India. But they didn’t solve the problem entirely, because few of them provided services such as waste separation and processing. Besides, some of them had set up recycling plants several kilometres away from cities. Vehicles carrying recyclables to these plants were so poorly maintained that the garbage kept dropping all along the roadways.

 

To fix this, Rodrigues partnered with these companies to source for recycling machines which were then placed in waste-generating areas like tech parks, large residential complexes and schools. This helped to reduce transportation of waste and convert the garbage into resources.
 

Rodrigues started this as a non-profit in 2013. Soon, she decided to make money out of solving the problem by setting up Saahas Waste Management. Today, she revealed that Saahas has secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Indian Angel Network. Nagaraj Prakasam along with Upaya Social Ventures also participated in this round.

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This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.