Kachra Co: Value Your Waste

Kachra Co. is led by Shalki Mishra (24), a young female entrepreneur building data-driven Waste Ecosystem with AI.

Her venture, Kachra.co brings waste management under the ambit of your smartphone like nearly all other utilities. Through Kachra, she aims to bring about a massive cultural & mindset change, converting an untouchable's job to a respectful service like the internet.

Shalki has worked with one of India's major consumer brand for over 2 years and has developed the expertise required in operating Kachra Co. Her work includes directly supervising and working with 60 ground-level partners involved in daily service utilities.

She holds a masters degree in Business Administration & a bachelors degree in Electronics Engineering.

Kachra Co.(Kachra meaning waste) is a tech-enabled social venture with a mission to enable communities to manage their wet & dry waste responsibly. It aims to reduce the energy and capital investment by 10x that goes into waste segregation.

We leverage the power of tech to enable communities with data-driven decisions, build cleanliness, add measurements & drive responsible behaviour changes of waste segregation at source. 

We aim to bring transparency, structure, and accountability into the waste management ecosystem.

Kachra Co. is a self-sustainable feedback framework that can be adopted by
any community from Kerela to Kenya, while uplifting the people from the ignored, marginalised communities engaged in sanitation work and providing
dignity, value, and rights.

Urban Indian population produces 62 million tonnes of waste annually, almost
40-60% of which is wet waste that could have been composted at the
community level, thereby reducing waste by an estimated 30 million tonnes,
reducing the landfills in half, and slashing the transportation cost.
Segregation and responsible composting is the lowest hanging fruit with
multiple ancillary communities, environmental, and economic benefit. 

Kachra Co enables this via IoT based measurements at every stage. We use AI-enabled optimization to pick up the waste from the residents, keep informing them of their community waste performance, and responsible disposal within 5 miles of the residence.

Kachra Co is a community-powered framework that allows waste producers
to responsibly segregate the waste at source. It brings accountability in the
process, by creating data and incentives based relationship between waste
producers & waste collectors.

In this process, Kachra Co uplifts the ignored, marginalized communities by
formally including the sanitation partners into the waste management system
- it provides the necessary support, respect & dignity of labor. People from
these communities risk their lives by exposing themselves to a cocktail of
untreated waste.

Waste Management is an ignored, menial, mismanaged problem in India and across the world. 

Kachra Co partners with community leaders, waste collectors/partners, municipal corporations to come together to optimize and add value through these steps: 

1. Kachra Co ties up each community residents with their waste collector encourage a relationship between the two, through Know Your Partner Initiative.

2. Through a direct partnership between the waste generator and collector, it ensures proper segregation of wet and dry waste. 

3. The segregated wet waste is composted at a community level, thereby reducing overall community waste production by 50-60%.

4. Kachra Co partners with local municipal corporations and businesses to distribute the dry waste to the source companies for recycling. 

5. Through app-based gamification of the segregation process, it rewards each household on their segregation performance.

6. Central to all, we put IoT sensors to measure weight and locations at every step to build accountability, optimisation, and incentives for minimal waste production along and responsible disposal.

Kachra Co. benefits all the stakeholders involved in the waste production, collection, management, and disposal process.

Today, globally, waste collection is considered a menial, undesirable job. There are no measurements, data or technology innovations anywhere in this process. Rather this is the only industry that has changed very little in the last 20-30 years.

By introducing measurements and messages, we build accountability and relationship between the stakeholders. For instance, do you know how much waste your household produced yesterday, last week, average monthly?

In India, people face an insidious problem whereby the collectors don't come to pick waste for days and weeks leading to irresponsible disposal in empty lands in the neighbourhood. 

Kachra Co. gives weight measurements to the stakeholders. It goes one step further, to give averages, comparisons, assistance to reduce waste, and rewards on good waste practices. 

In the background, Kachra Co disposes of the wet waste in the community itself which produces composting for neighbourhood usage. We all want to produce less waste and manage it responsibly, but by adding difficulties and hindrances, we deter otherwise good citizens towards poor actions. Kachra Co allows a positive feedback loop within a community to create responsible waste minimising behaviour.

Our project relates to dimensions 2 & 3.

When we started, we soon realised an absence of basic human interaction & relation between waste collectors & producers. Our waste collectors engage in the most basic service utility yet are the ones often ostracised by the society.

We are changing the narrative about sanitation work = other service utility by adding cleanliness, technology into the process, and ensuring dignity & par wages to the partners.

We are solving the world's most urgent problem by building a data-driven system that challenges people's attitudes towards sanitation partners & inculcates responsible behaviours in them.

One early morning in 2018, I went hiking at one of India's most important Biodiversity Park on the outskirts of the city of Gurgaon. Merely 5 miles away to this ecological site, stood a huge mountain sized untreated waste dump overshadowing the natural beauty of the area.

In India, close to 80% of the waste is untreated and dumped at the landfill sites & water bodies. This untreated waste was threatening the biodiversity of its surroundings.

The increasing burden of landfill cost, transportation cost, waste to energy power plant cost, all point to a simple solution of reducing total waste at source. Thus, Kachra Co. was formed with a mission to solve our waste problem starting from the source.

We live in a world where we can order food or buy clothes at the tap of a button, measure user engagement & traction with tons of data, yet when it comes to waste, we are dependent on an old archaic system.

Today, as soon as we dispose off our waste, we also dispose of the responsibility from ourselves without thinking where that waste is eventually ending up.

Solving the problem of waste neither sounds like a cool idea nor brings admiration to the people involved in fixing this. I am passionate about this project because I believe we have all the means to upgrade our waste system, we just need the right minds to fix the system.

In a society like India, I believe this sort of transition can bring about a massive cultural & mindset change, converting an untouchable's job to a respectful service like the internet.

Kachra.co is a team of millennials deciding to commit to solving one of the most critical challenges faced by Indian Society i.e. Problem of Waste Mismanagement.

Kachra Co. is led by Shalki Mishra (24), who has worked with one of India's major consumer brand for over 2 years and has developed the expertise required in operating Kachra Co.

While she brings operational, business management expertise, her team of smart, enthusiastic youngsters bring network of open-source tech developers, designers, high school kids, social impact activists all committed to solving the most common community problem.

This young team together brings 5+ years of understanding & expertise from their respective fields that fuels this social venture.

Doing something with waste is neither cool nor brings admiration to the doer, nobody wants to get their hands dirty in fixing the broken ecosystem.

To kickstart Kachra, I approached several local civic bodies in Delhi NCR to incorporate Kachra in various residential complex & societies, but it was always met with high inertia, the general unwillingness of the institutions to bring technology & innovation into the existing system. Overall bureaucracy & disconnect between the residential & civic bodies posed a challenge in kickstarting Kachra.

Eventually, I piloted Kachra with 5 households which helped show the impact on several stakeholders.

We are now serving close to 200 households with 6 sanitation partners, collecting around 90-100 kgs of waste everyday.

In my previous stint working in one India's leading e-commerce startups, I was among the first few young female leaders, spearheading launch of their channel. I've built leadership skills by directly hiring, training & leading a team of 60 ground workers engaging in service utilities. 

Inherent passion to make a social impact & the expertise gained leading people, instilled confidence in me to kickstart Kachra Co. 

Kachra Co leverages technology to digitize & introduce a data-driven approach to the waste management process thereby bringing transparency & accountability of waste management on communities and households.

- Household-level: We provide households with a simple chatbot based that helps them better track and manage their waste disposal, meanwhile also making them aware of their waste numbers & incentivizing change.

- Local Municipal Corporation: Helps the local community manager to schedule & coordinate the waste pickups on a daily level - thus drastically reducing unnecessary trips to household

- Gets community members more involved in the process by introducing a segregation score which incentivizes good behaviour such as segregation at source.

- Long term data collection helps the policymakers to better understand the trends, leading to better planning, allocation & utilization of resources.

In the long term, it can help households make smarter product choices driving the sale of environment-friendly alternatives in the consumer market. We have introduced a community level scorecard system, which pegs household waste to a community average. To incentivize good waste behaviour, we have partnered with elite events, coupons agencies, local business to give hamper prizes to the leading community members

Kachra.co brings waste management under the ambit of your smartphone like nearly all other utilities. In a society like India, this sort of transition in semantics can bring about a massive cultural & mindset change, converting an untouchable's job to a respectful service like the internet.

Today, as soon as we dispose off our waste, we also dispose of the responsibility from ourselves without thinking where that waste is eventually ending up. We show empathy towards our planet when we see images and documentaries of our waste ending up in the ocean and landfills, but since we fail to see the direct impact of our actions, we fail to recognize the consequences of our actions.

Kachra Co creates an ecosystem that develops cognizance among people regarding waste segregation at source. It educates people on correctly classifying waste into wet and dry segments. The outcome of these actions brings transparency & accountability into the hands of people, reduces the burden on the civic bodies & creating value with proper management of waste.

Kachra Co. thrives on community participation by creating meaningful relationships between the waste producers and waste collectors working towards creating social & environmental impact. The long-term impact would be creating responsibility among people for their waste by developing habits & bringing behavioral change in their lives. The sanitation partners from the neglected communities will be empowered with respect & dignity. These new habits will reduce the overall carbon footprint on the planet, make people more empathetic towards the environment & to the people working in the sanitation community.

In the next phase, Kachra Co is also looking to partner with community farming companies and startups to create local farms to offload the compost and demonstrate the transition of waste to vegetables to the community, thereby increasing participation and value perception.

Currently, we are conceptualizing & testing the prototype in a single community of ~ 100 households. We will be moving to the pilot stage in the next couple of months and aim to serve ~500 households by the end of this year.

Once finalized, this framework can be scaled and replicated across many communities - hence, in next two years, we aim to serve all communities & household complexes in major cities across India like Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Pune.

In the next 5 years, our approach to scale is to replicate the Kachra Co framework in every urban and suburban community in the world.

Currently, we are testing our prototype in a single community of ~ 100 households. Our goal is to be able to empower every community with the Kachra CO. framework.

We will be moving to the pilot stage in the next couple of months and aim to serve ~200 households by the end of this year. Once finalized, this framework can be scaled and replicated across many communities - hence, by next year, we aim to serve all communities & household complexes in Delhi NCR, India.

By 2022, we aim to open source the entire Kachra Co. Tech, framework, components so that it can be picked by any community in the world to optimally manage their waste. Kachra Co. will always be present to provide additional support and other value-added services to global adopters of our open-source framework.

Kachra is slightly operations heavy, thereby Capex heavy model, which requires a certain initial investment. In addition, it requires partnership with either the municipal corporation or the Resident Welfare Associations which puts a bottle-neck on expansion. It also requires the participation of local governments and communities, which if not seen as desirable, tech-savvy, value-creating, could be an issue.

Major challenges are:

1. Bureaucratic Level:
   1. Permissions & grants involved
   2. Disconnect between the civic bodies and people
   3. High inertia & lack of willingness in the civic bodies
2. Perception Level:
   1. Changing the perception towards sanitation work & workers
   2. Bringing accountability & responsibility in the hands of waste producers
3. Behavioural changes:
   1. Inculcating the households to adapt to new habits
   2. Bringing changes into the lifestyle of waste producers

1. The first challenge to Kachra Co. is why should an existing society adopt this new framework. Hence inertia is our primary challenge. Kachra Co solves this by providing highly differential and additive services of measurement and messages, not provided by any partner across India.
2. Yet, we understand the challenge of sales and adoption into different communities, but based on pilot, the customer experience is significantly better than the existing alternatives, and with more refinement and focus on user experience, we can make Kachra Co a desirable entity in each community, almost like the desire of Starbucks coffee shops or a cool Thai restaurant
3. Lastly, as we grow and build the brand of good work, tech & deliverables in the community, these problems should significantly reduce.

Currently, we have taken requisite permissions & partnered with local Residential welfare Association & Community managers to test and implement our prototype.

Kachra Co earns money by Monthly Subscription-based model for Waste Management from Households. Almost 80% Indian households pay $5 to $10 on monthly basis to waste collectors on an informal basis.

We also earn revenue by one time sales & installation of smart bins in respective households. We have researched and are working towards contractual service fees from municipal corporations, which takes Kachra Co towards marginal profitability while paying respectable wages and benefits to the waste collection partners.

Further Kachra Co earns revenue by selling any sellable dry waste in the appropriate recycle marketplace, and by revenue-based subscription with local nurseries, organic farming institutions etc to sell compost

Our data and insights are also valuable to variety of data companies and partners, but we are yet to explore that value chain. We expect Kachra Co. chatbot channel to be a major advertisement avenue for the upcoming zero waste brands across the world.

As the growing economies across the globe observe an increase in urban population, consumption level & rise in per capita income level, the waste industry is expected to reach $530 Billion by 2025 globally & $14 Billion for India.

Increase in consumption has led to an increase in the levels of municipal wastes across the India. There lies a market opportunity where 62 million tons of waste is generated on an annual basis & is expected to increase by two times by 2030. The increasing burden of landfill cost, transportation cost, waste to energy power plant cost, all point to a simple solution of reducing total waste at source.

For many municipal bodies across India, transportation cost of waste is a major chunk of the budget, and Kachra Co promises an estimated 50% reduction in that. Thereby, Kachra Co is not only an environmentally friendly, a tech-savvy alternative to waste management, but also makes good economic sense of the municipal partners.

In this process, Kachra Co brings millions of daily wage, undignified workers into the folds of the formal economy with monthly wage and basic benefits like insurance. In our pilots, the simple act of using a smartphone to find the pickup location and rating segregation quality of the waste producers have shown to empower the waste collectors.

By Open Sourcing Kachra Co's self-sustainable framework, all the technology, tools & insights, we aim to replicate our framework into every major urban and sub-urban population centre in the world.

Kachra Co is currently being evaluated and implemented as a prototype in one community in the city of Gurgaon, India. We are working in DLF Phase 1 which is comprised of about 4000 households. Of this, we are working with 100 households and one composting bin.

Currently, we have not raised any capital and our bootstrapping our effort. We are charging $8 per month to our customers that covers some basic costs. Once we are able to show proof of concept and capabilities, we are looking to get some municipal contracts to pay salaries and scale operations. 

Kachra Co. is based on the premise of respectable wages to waste collectors, and thereby with a mix of the workforce and capex cost of setting composting bins, along with other hardware and software tech; is expected to require $100,000 to $250,000 of seed capital. 

This would enable us to do a successful demonstration in one community, put numbers and margins to all our assumptions, and optimize for basic sustainable social enterprise profitability. We have envisioned Kachra Co as neither a non-profit nor a hyper-profit chasing unicorn; but a balanced sustainable profit-generating organization that can keep on reinvesting in its people, technology, and customer experience.

Post covid lockdown or in early 2021, we plan to raise basic capital of $100,000 to $150,000 from environmentalists, philanthropists & social entrepreneurs. Post that we want to fine tune our household and municipal corporation level pricing to build a sustainable financial model.  

$20,000 to $50,000 

The mentorship opportunities from the Elevate community of social entrepreneurs & change-makers will help drive the social innovation needed by Kachra Co. The global exposure & interdisciplinary guidance will help us navigate through the challenges involved in scaling our framework in communities all over the world

The burden of waste management, over the years, has become a problem left on the civil administration and waste collection communities to handle. To this day, waste is treated like a dirty & untouchable job, meant to be undertaken by the poor & marginalised communities who are thrown into the risky business.

The shift in responsibility from the hands of waste collectors to waste generators demands a behavioural change into the lives of people. The core of Kachra Co's framework demands and nudges the individual users to recognise their impact potential and "care" about their waste. Becoming a part of the Solve community would make Kachra Co a brand and also change the narrative around conventional waste management.

Kachra Co's framework thrives by closely working and partnering with various stakeholders. We need more mentorship from social entrepreneurs, policymakers possibly from their experience in helping bring meaningful transformation in communities, this will enable us to build solutions which best optimises & caters for the needs of our communities. @Kshitij Purwar

Kachra Co is an enthusiastic team of young and passionate environmentalists, waste champions and leaders who are committed to solving the most pressing problem of our generation.

If possible, we would like mentorship and help from Solver community in designing social behavioural nudges, frameworks that are neutral & easy to adapt by different communities on a global scale.

• We must build deep partnerships with various Public institutions who are the most significant stakeholders in the waste value ecosystem. Policy-making bodies such as the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, regulatory agencies like State Pollution Control Board established in various states administering waste collection bodies & civic administration.
• Various municipal corporations and leaders in local or state governance who frame important environmental, sanitation policies or undertake major projects.
• Partnerships with leading consumer brands or waste polluters by enabling a chain where the garbage goes back to the brands who can responsibly recycle their waste.
• Partnerships with local Residential Welfare Associations & Community administrations, to establish the Kachra Co framework in multiple societies while fulfilling their unique challenges and needs to implement this framework.
• Partnerships with environmental advocacy groups, change-makers, think tanks and civil society organisations like UN GPWM, WHO, International Solid Waste Association & other National Solid Waste Associations, Gates Foundation etc, to develop interest and spread cognisance about waste and its impact on the environment and communities.
• Partnerships with various local NGO bodies, social enterprises who are involved in collection, recycling and upcycling of dry waste.