In Delhi’s thrum, waste pickers toil unseen. A chance chat with Dharma, a waste picker who migrated from Uttar Pradesh to Delhi, changed how 20‑year‑old Karan viewed the city’s recycling chain.
“Nothing was fixed,” says Dharma of his old daily earnings. It was uncertain, irregular, and without respect. His words hit Karan immediately.
In Delhi’s heat, migrant waste collectors trudge the streets with sacks, facing fickle pay and invisible dignity in a fragmented recycling world.
Born to a humble family from Bihar, Karan watched his father build a small workshop from scratch. “Perseverance can turn emptiness into opportunity,” he says.
As a child, he took apart everything he could and put it back together, driven by a restless curiosity that wouldn’t quit until he understood how things worked.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, he and his brother ran a door‑to‑door milk delivery service. “A business has to solve a real problem,” he says.
In school, Karan joined Udhyam Shiksha, a field-based entrepreneurship programme by Udhyam Learning Foundation with the Delhi government. The aim was problem-solving, and real-world skills.
“Udhyam asked us to go outside, talk to people, and observe problems,” he says. It pushed him past shy classroom life into Delhi’s waste sites, where he met informal workers and saw their unstructured world.
He says, “They told me, ‘We are not scrap collectors. We are businessmen.’” Those words changed him.
Karan named his idea Finobadi, a combination of finance and kabadi (trash), to bring clarity and fairness to recycling. He printed pamphlets and hit the streets.
With seed funds, a basic website and app, his team began an organised collection across neighbourhoods. By 2024, Finobadi was a registered company.
Every day starts with tree planting. Finobadi plants a sapling for every 100 kg recycled. “It reminds us why we do what we do,” Karan says.
At the sorting hub, women trained in safe segregation find income and confidence. “Now I support my children’s studies,” says Sunita with pride.
Finobadi has processed 450 tonnes of waste, planted 3,318 trees and created dependable income for over 70 workers. It is a new kind of recycling story.
“We want waste collectors to earn more and live with respect. At the same time, we want citizens to take responsibility for their waste and hand it over to us so it can be sent to the right place and properly recycled,” Karan says.
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