In Conversation with Rahul Naini: CEO and Cofounder of ReCircle

When you think of a CFA charter holder, fresh out of college, you’d imagine them clocking in 12+ hours in an investment banking firm. After all, it comes with the degree. But that wasn’t the case with Rahul Nainani, who instead chose to spend his weekdays, near landfills, speaking to rag pickers and municipal waste employees. With the piles of trash increasing day by day, Rahul and his co-founder Gurashish were intrigued about the waste management space, but what drew their attention, even more, was the business numbers attached to an untapped market of waste management. And that gave birth to ReCircle, (previously RaddiConnect), a business organization that manages your waste for you in more than 35 cities of India!

We graduated right out of college in 2014 and registered ourselves for the Google Start-up weekend, with a nascent idea of being a modern raddiwala. Some chord struck, we won the competition and everyone loved our idea and that was the validation for our business model. In those initial days, we researched for about 9 months and spoke to over 250 raddiwalas, but in 2016, a fire broke out in Deonar, one of Asia’s largest dumping grounds.

Now, keep in mind, these fires occur every day, but what made this day different was the movement of the wind blowing towards the city that could not control the fire.
Not only did the fire cause irrevocable damage, but upon further investigation, we found out that citizens living around this dumping ground had an average life of only 37 years.

We decided then, just how Uber is for drivers, we wanted to be that platform for Raddiwallas and create a sound waste management ecosystem.
ReCircle is a captivating company. It sits at the convergence of collecting waste, tying up with recycling companies, and connecting with NGOs. While they started out as B2C, connecting raddiwalas with everyday customers to dispose of their dry waste mindfully, over time they’ve expanded into two other verticals. A plastic neutral program for corporates like Dabar, HUL, Marico, Bikanerwala and so on.

ReCircle works with large scale producers of plastic, such as FMCGs, collect their plastic, partner up with formal and informal waste managers and make the companies go plastic neutral. The program not only recovers an equivalent amount of plastic companies put out in the environment but also mitigates its effects on the environmental, social and economical front.
The third side is setting up infrastructure for dry waste. There’s very limited capacity for dry waste collection. We not only collect the dry waste from societies but also give jobs to rag pickers and ensure the waste is disposed of correctly.
Rahul says, ‘We don’t like to call ourselves a waste management company, but in fact a resource management company because any waste is a resource to us.’

We don’t collect hazardous waste.
What I’ve seen in this pandemic is, people have gotten a little more conscious and realised waste is something that needs to be managed. We ran a campaign in June 2020, where along with doctors and policemen, garbage collectors were also frontline workers. People started paying attention to the sweepers in their buildings, etc.

We started calling our waste collectors by the title, ‘Safai Saathi’. During the initial lockdown days, we spoke to our safai saathis and we asked them if they want to shut shop but they said if we don’t do our work, it’s only going to create more diseases going forward. That’s when I knew, the pandemic has got us all a bit more conscious.

We’re a social impact business and of course, social impact is important but business is also important. India is the 3rd largest waste generator in the world and is going to become the largest in the coming years. By 2025 it’s going to be a $13 billion industry. A completely untapped sector from the business and finance point of view. As an organization, we’re a young start-up, but we’ve been profitable for the last 3 years. In our case, we’ve been growing year on year, scaling our business in different verticals, sectors and cities.

I personally feel plastic is the best innovation in the 21st century. The versatility is high, the cost is low, it’s cheaper to transport and the shelf life is longer. Without plastic, we wouldn’t have had development in multiple sectors like automobiles, healthcare, retail, etc.
The problem is not with the plastic but the irresponsible disposal of it. A large number of plastic waste can be recycled but the problem lies in the recovery of plastic. Investment and initiation from the government and corporates are needed in the sector.

Metals and glass are great as they can be recycled but they come at a cost which India can’t afford in all walks of life. We’re a country that sells INR 1 shampoo sachets in tier 2 and tier 3 cities because of the income-based lifestyle. We work in a linear economy approach but we need to learn to live in a circular approach. Wherever we can reduce, we need to.

Changing the status quo regarding linear economy (take, make, dispose) to a circular economy (resources stay in the economy) is the biggest challenge that we face in achieving our vision of Ethical Circularity. Everyone has become comfortable with a linear economy; to change the perception needs to change, immediately. We realize that all stakeholders in the supply chain need to do their bit to make a circular economy a reality and collaboration with them is the key to making that happen..

Essentially, we’re working on the recovery of waste but the vision for the organization is ethical circularity. Today we are working with big brands to become plastic neutral but for the industry to go forward there needs to be a demand for recyclable plastic. In that context our aim is circularity, ensuring most of the waste is recycled and put back into the system.

The journey towards sustainability is extremely long and might feel overwhelming at times. My advice is to break down your goals into smaller milestones to track the progress of your organization. Plus, there are multiple other startups in the space that are working towards similar goals, so instead of considering them as competition, see them as partners that you could collaborate with or learn from.