Home Startup Stories Kabaadi At Your Doorstep: Finding a Recycling Home for the Waste Materials

Kabaadi At Your Doorstep: Finding a Recycling Home for the Waste Materials

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Kabaadi 4- Glocal Khabar

Riding the frail bicycle to places that give wastes and placing the collected debris in the big vacant space in the backseat of his cycle, a Kabaadiwala moves in the dusky lands. Fitting indelible memories of disgrace and scorn of being a Kabaadiwala in his heart, he moves towards to places that buy the residues he brings. The Kabaadiwala knows not that his cycle is going places that dump his waste and are creating an imperil to the land he walks. He has been doing this for years and till date, this phenomena of collecting, receiving and dumping has been going on.

With an idea of not letting these wastes to be dumped haphazardly in sites, Varun Saraf, the brain behind Kabaadi app and Founder of Blue Waste to Value Pvt. Ltd., took the lead to impart a proper phenomenon of waste recycling. Through the name Kabaadi, it is easy to surmise that it deals with waste but the way they deal with waste is not by dumping, but creating useful products through recycling.Kabaadi 4- Glocal Khabar

Kabaadi is a mobile application and an online platform that connects waste generators to waste recyclers and pays people for selling their wastes. The app’s vibrancy has been alive in the entrepreneurial constellation for eight months now and its goal of utilizing wastes to recyclable materials has taken the app to take vibrant steps. The team of Kabaadi is not only a mobile application but also a revolutionizing idea that seems to vow on welcoming proper waste management procedures in Nepal.

Kabaadi At Your Doorstep

An online extension of Blue Waste to Value Pvt. Ltd.(BW2V), a social enterprise that deals with solid waste management to create a value from waste, Kaabadiapp works in association with BW2V’s sister enterprise, Blue Technology. The team of Kabaadi has been using the expertise of BW2V to initiate its steps in the solid waste management.

Nabin Bikash Maharjan, CEO of Blue Waste to Value, a notable personality of solid waste management in Nepal, adds on to very optimistic words about the motive. Maharjan who has had an experience of working in solid waste management for more than twenty years confers, “Bringing wastes from one part of the city and dumping these wastes into the other sites is not our aim. From the wastes we bring, we demand no monetary profit but want to dispel awareness about waste segregating methods and the values they have after being recycled.”Kabaadi 4- Glocal Khabar

Through Kaabadi app, people with the waste can simply select the scrap dealer from the list of nearby dealers. They can facilitate the scrap dealers with the picture of the scrap and the waste collectors pick up these wastes from the areas. These wastes are not dumped to any other landfill of the country but are recycled to produce functional products.

Suraj Jaiswal, the Technical Project Manager of Kabaadi shares, “Besides solid waste management we would want people to be aware about source segregation. Once they learn to differentiate the residues, the impeding problem of the solid waste will reduce itself.”Kabaadi 8- Glocal Khabar

The team of four technical and three non-technical members for the app, Kaabadi has been a home to more than 8,000 waste collectors and scrap dealers. According to Prasuj Mainali, the social media marketer of Kabaadi, “We have extended our works in Kirtipur. One of the fascinating part of the work there is that the kids of Kirtipur have been connecting their household wastes to the scrap dealers through Kabaadi.”

Kabaadi has negotiated with more than nine hundred families of Kirtipur and scrap dealers through BW2V’s Kirtipur Waste Management Services. Along with it, Kabaadi has also presented their idea to the schools located in Kirtipur. They have organized orientations in partnership with Lalitpur Metropolitan City-Output Bases Aid (LMC-OBA), for the scrap dealers and waste collectors to facilitate them with necessary ideas on the unified rate and digital scaling.Kabaadi 11- Glocal Khabar

 “After the launch of Kabaadi app, our Kaabadiwalas to scrap dealers had issues on understanding who would get the ultimate profit out of it. Our app is for every single person who is working on the cycle of recycling, be it our Kabadiwaalas or recycling industries. Our initiation of technological tapping between the process tries to help bring out systematic work phenomena for these unsung heroes.”- Suraj Jaiswal, Technical Project Manager, Kabaadi

In order to help people who find difficulties to use the application, Kaabadi team has marked its presence on social media sites. People can easily converse about the scraps through their social media sites as well.

Problems

“People’s ignorance in source segregation is the major complication. Similarly, the concept of selling waste online has not rooted people’s mind yet and many of them practice unhealthy bargaining.” asserts Suraj. The onus of convincing the scrap dealers was a major hurdle they had to face. The scrap dealers believed that the waste would never come in a bulk and the Kabaadi team was approaching them for their particular profit. Gradually, with the advancement of time, Kabaadi has succeeded in convincing them.

Many scrap dealers don’t have the slightest idea of the tech application. To help them through the process of using Kabaadi app, the team has been bringing out information sessions for enthusiastic scrap dealers. Suraj says, “During the information sessions, many Kabaadiwalas have mentioned the plight of humiliation and unnecessary accusations of theft they have to face. It’s high time that people change such disgraceful attitude.”

Future Goals

After working on the scrap market of Kirtipur, Lalitpur, and the valley, Suraj intends to invest his tech experience and ideas in the flourishing scrap market of Butwal and Narayanghat. Suraj adds, “Currently, we have numerous wants for our app. The first and foremost thing is to help change the stereotype viewpoints of people about waste collectors. For helping them to gain a corporate feeling, we have been trying to present them with uniforms, digital weighing scales, proper bargaining ideas and unified rate for the trash collection.”

The bigger idea is, however, to extend the latitude of connection that lies between the scrap and the recycling process. Besides bringing a connection, the Kabaadi team has been actively working with KaabadiSanghs to set protocols for the certification process in Kabaadi. Suraj mentions, “The scrap dealers have dealt with a bulk of scraps and this bulk is the synonym of their experience. Sometimes they deal with problems related to documentation of systematic bulk orders. We desire to help them out with this process.”

To the Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Everything depends upon one’s passion. Uptaking simple ideas, heightening this simplicity and focusing on the product through hard work is entrepreneurship. Often times while moving forward in the journey by assuming on the venture, the fundamental idea might change and we would never know about such change. So, it is a must that we always cross-check our core idea in every phase of the journey.

Startups for Better Nepal

Presented By: Kabita Sen