What a startup is good for if it is not able to create a positive impact on society.
Recently, a Bengaluru-based juice shop was making headlines for being India’s first zero-waste juice shop. Raja, the owner of juice shop ‘Eat Raja’, explained the concept of zero waste by using a tagline- What comes from the earth goes back to earth.
Based on a similar principle, today we are going to explore a low-cost business opportunity in India. That is waste management in India
To begin with, first, let me introduce our readers with types of waste. If the idea of waste in your mind is only of the waste we all used to dump in dustbins such as kitchen waste, fruit and vegetable skins, leftovers in plates, wrappers, plastic bottles or paper products, then let me clarify that waste comprises much more than that.
If we try to categorize, waste can be divided into nine different types:
- Municipal Solid Waste
- Electronic Waste
- Industrial Waste
- Construction Waste
- Agro Waste
- Rubber Waste
- Biomedical Waste
- Plastic Waste
- Scrap Waste
Depending on the type of waste, the business model of waste management varies. Well, to be honest, the waste management business is not for non-serious players. If you are reading this post just for gaining some knowledge, then it’s okay. But if you want to seriously make a business out of it, then you have to do a lot of research, which by no means can be covered in a few hundred words.
But still, in the next three minutes of reading, you will get some glimpse or basics or brief look of how waste management business in India works.
If we talk about the business model of waste management in India (any type of waste), there are four basic steps: Collection, Segregation & Sorting, Processing, and Selling.
For collection, you need to identify the source of your waste, invest in vehicles, and grant permits from authorities. For example, if you are opening an e-waste management company, there is no point in collecting e-waste door to door. You need to contact big enterprises, smartphone manufacturers, and local e-waste dealers.
Similarly, for processing, for each waste type, you need different kinds of processing machinery and units. However, for segregation and sorting, you have to employ manual labour or to skip the process, you can already collect segregated waste.
And the last step is selling. Again for that, you need to identify the market for your processed waste. So, you have to establish the whole process of the supply chain.
This was a brief look at the business model of waste management in India. And for today, we are ending this post with a few statistics which will boost your confidence to start a waste management business in India.
As per the NPCS report:
- India’s waste management sector is expected to be worth US$13.62 billion by 2025 with an annual growth rate of 7.17 percent.
- Indian municipal solid waste (MSW) management market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.14% by 2025 while e-waste management market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.03% during the same period.
- India has planned to achieve a capacity of 2.9 million hospital beds by 2025 which will help the biomedical waste management market to grow at a CAGR of 8.41%.
With only a few players in the market, many young startups are growing 150% every year. So it is the right time to invest in waste management business in India
If you want pre-investment information and business plans for starting your own business, let us know in the comment section below.
