20-YO Delhi Boy Recycles 450 Tonnes of Waste & Brings Dignity to 70 Waste Pickers

“Earlier, I used to roam all day. Some days I would earn enough to take food home; some days I would come back almost empty-handed. Nothing was fixed,” says Dharma, a 39-year-old waste picker who migrated from Uttar Pradesh to Delhi. He pauses before adding softly, “And most of the time, people did not treat us with respect.”

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“For the longest time, I was facing difficulties in finding work,” adds Ayaz Khan, another waste collector. Their words reflect a truth long buried beneath the noise of urban life.

A city built on invisible labour

In the vast, pulsating heart of Delhi, where millions of tonnes of waste move silently through the hands of invisible workers, the people who perform one of the city’s most essential roles often remain the most poorly treated. 

Waste collectors, many of them migrants, walk door-to-door under the punishing sun, knocking on gates, waiting outside homes, and sifting through discards that fuel India’s recycling economy. Their labour keeps neighbourhoods functioning, yet their earnings are unpredictable, their schedules unstable, and their dignity frequently overlooked.

The problem goes far beyond an individual experience. India’s waste ecosystem is largely informal, with millions of workers depending on inconsistent daily hauls. A successful day can feel like luck; a bad day is simply swallowed and survived. Rates fluctuate, weighing is often opaque, and collectors travel long distances for uncertain returns. 

It is into this fractured system that ‘Finobadi’, founded by a 20-year-old college-going entrepreneur from Delhi, has stepped in with a promise of stability, clarity and dignity.

The unlikely founder: Curiosity, struggle, and street-level learning

Finobadi’s founder, Karan Kumar, did not grow up imagining he would build a recycling company. His story begins in a humble home in Delhi, born to parents who had moved from Samastipur in Bihar in the 1990s. His father had studied only up to Class 5, yet started a small perforation workshop from scratch.

“Watching my father build a livelihood with almost nothing taught me that perseverance can turn emptiness into opportunity,” he tells The Better India. “Everything I do carries the values I learnt from him.”

Karan was always drawn to the inner workings of things. He dismantled irons, remote-controlled cars, broken electronics, and anything he could get his hands on, then put them back together. 

“I was endlessly curious. If something was not working, I couldn’t sleep until I figured out why,” Karan says.

By his early teens, he was shadowing local electricians, memorising their numbers, observing how they diagnosed faults, and even mediating service calls. He built a small informal network. He would take wiring or repair requests from neighbours, then pass them to electricians he trusted, earning a small margin, before attending his afternoon classes in school.

Then came the pandemic.

When COVID-19 lockdowns began, and his father’s workshop temporarily closed, he and his younger brother, Apurv, saw it as an opportunity to experiment. They started a small door-to-door milk delivery service. Spoilt milk still made for the occasional setback, but the experience became more of a lesson than a hardship.

“That was when I understood that a business has to solve a real problem,” he recalls. “If it doesn’t, it will eventually collapse.” The moment the city reopened, he shut the service down, but the seed of entrepreneurship had already been sown.

Seeing Delhi’s landfills up close

The real shift came during his Class 11 and 12 years, when he joined ‘Udhyam Shiksha’, a programme by Udhyam Learning Foundation in partnership with the Delhi government. The initiative encourages students to solve real-world problems, conduct field research, and build entrepreneurial mindsets.

“It changed everything for me,” he says. “I was a shy student who hardly spoke. But Udhyam asked us to go outside, talk to people, observe problems, and interview stakeholders. That is where my confidence began.”

Around that time, Delhi’s landfill fires dominated headlines, with mountains of waste smouldering under the sun and releasing toxic fumes. The young entrepreneur decided to see one for himself.

What he found there unsettled him deeply. Mixed waste arrived without pause, and informal workers, including women, children and men, sorted recyclables under harsh conditions. The system felt fragmented, unstructured and unfair.

“I realised that recyclable waste in India moves almost entirely through informal workers,” he says. “Yet they are the ones receiving the least support.”

He began reaching out to kabadiwalas (scrap dealers) through word of mouth, meeting one collector after another to understand how they worked and what challenges shaped their days. He recalls one conversation in particular, his voice still carrying the insight it gave him. “They told me, ‘We are not scrap collectors. We are businessmen. We turn things that have no value into things that have value.’ That was when it struck me that this work creates worth where none exists.”

Those words stayed with Karan and grew into the idea that would become Finobadi.

From a school project to a registered company

The name Finobadi merges two ideas, Fin (finance) and ‘badi’, a nod to the kabadi (scrap) ecosystem. Karan wanted to bring financial transparency into an informal system.

He recruited a few school friends, printed pamphlets and began door-to-door recyclable collection in Delhi’s Chanchal Park. Their early mistakes became lessons, including a bulky washing machine that brought less value than expected and a laptop that yielded almost nothing.

“Those experiences taught us we needed better knowledge. Plastics, metals, and paper — each has multiple grades,” he says.

Through the Business Blasters programme by Udhyam Learning Foundation, he secured seed capital. He went on to build a basic website and app. By 2023, they were collecting in multiple neighbourhoods. By then, he had built a small network of kabadiwalas who trusted him enough to try a more organised system. By 2024, Finobadi was formally registered. But Karan’s most crucial support came from the ecosystem around him.

Apurv, his younger brother, has been part of Finobadi since day one, contributing to operations, early decision-making, and groundwork. Karan emphasises that the company’s journey has been built by both brothers, shaped by the same collaborative spirit that began during their early experiments.

A young founder finds his support system

“The Sarvo Udhyam ecosystem felt like stepping into a world where everyone was building something,” Karan says. “Just like a child learns a language from the environment, we learnt entrepreneurship because of the environment.”

He met founders from Urban Company, Meesho and Flipkart. Mentors helped him refine his model. Teachers trained under Udhyam Shiksha guided him on research, documentation and accountability. Then came his biggest breakthrough.

Through Sarvo Udhyam’s network, Finobadi was connected to PhonePe, which extended a substantial loan amount in April 2025. “It was a turning point,” he says. “With that funding, we installed a plastic-shredding machine and strengthened our operations. They gave us the capital and confidence to grow our operations.”

Those changes helped Finobadi move towards a clearer, more dependable way of working.

How Finobadi works

Finobadi operates on clarity and respect. Each day follows a carefully designed flow:

Morning: Tree plantation and sapling care

For every 100 kilograms of waste recycled, Finobadi plants a tree. “It reminds us why we do what we do,” the young entrepreneur says.

Pickup scheduling

Customers send photos of waste via the app or WhatsApp. The system geo-tags the location, estimates the weight and assigns the nearest kabadiwala partner.

“Before this, I never knew if I would find work,” Dharma says. “Now everything is fixed. My income has gone up by nearly 30 percent.”

Digital weighing and receipts

Collectors use portable digital scales and generate instant receipts. “Earlier, the weighing was never consistent,” says Ayaz. “Now the rate is fixed, the weighing is clear, and I feel proud knowing that for every 100 kilos, a tree is planted.”

Sorting and segregation by trained women workers

At Finobadi’s centre, trained women sort waste into precise categories. Sunita, one of the centre’s sorters, says, “I was a stay-at-home mother with no income. Finobadi trained me in safe sorting. Now I support my children’s studies.”

Kamla, another sorter at the centre, shares a similar shift in confidence. “Before, I was treated as if my work did not matter,” she says. “Now people know me as someone who gives life to waste. That recognition is incredibly warm.”

Shredding and compacting

Low-value plastics are shredded into flakes, which increases their value.

Selling to certified recyclers

Finobadi sells responsibly to recyclers who turn PET plastic (polyethylene terephthalate, used in bottles and food containers) into T-shirts, metals into industrial components and paper into recycled sheets.

This is how income is generated; the revenue comes from selling segregated, processed, and graded waste to industries that repurpose it. Waste collectors receive a fixed portion of this revenue as wages. 

Dharma explains, “I collect the waste, segregate it, and deliver it to the centre. I know that it will be sold to a recycler, and part of the sale comes back to me as my income. Everything is transparent now.”

Ayaz adds, “Earlier, I had no idea how the money I earned was calculated. Now, the app shows the expected rate, the weight is recorded digitally, and the recyclers pay the company. A portion of that revenue becomes my wages. It feels good to see my work have real value.”

Sunita reflects, “When we sort plastics, metals, and paper, we understand that the sale of these items funds our salaries. It feels meaningful that I am contributing to the environment and earning a proper income for my family.”

Kamla agrees, “The more precise and careful we are in sorting and grading, the higher the value of the waste. This is how our effort translates directly into income, and it also supports tree planting and other Finobadi projects.”

By following this model, the startup generated Rs 50 lakh in revenue in 2024 while paying wages to more than 70 waste collectors, supporting their families and funding tree-planting initiatives. Over the past three years, from 2023 to 2025, it has processed 450 metric tonnes of waste, planted 3,318 trees across public parks and along roads in West Delhi and Najafgarh Road, and created predictable and dignified income for the workers connected to its system.

The impact, told by the people living it

For Dharma, the shift is worth noticing. “When I started working with Finobadi, I realised what respect feels like. When someone as young as Karan calls us ‘partners’, it means everything,” he says. Ayaz adds, “This is the first time I feel like my work contributes to the environment.”

Finobadi is expanding across Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon and Samastipur. The app is being strengthened. Partnerships with universities such as Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) are growing. More women are being trained, and more zero-waste campuses are being designed.

But its mission remains simple.

“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.

As Finobadi moves into new neighbourhoods, its purpose feels steady and clear: to make sure the hands that clean our cities can build lives filled with respect and possibility.

All pictures courtesy Karan Kumar