SONYA FATAH

LETTER FROM NOIDA: ENVIRONMENT

Entrepreneur wastes no time capitalizing on India ’s seemingly endless consumption

The Globe and Mail
Friday, January 5, 2007
SONYA FATAH

The sight of a suited businessman sifting through garbage isn’t common in India . But if you find yourselves on the outskirts of Noida, just east of the India ’s capital New Delhi , and spy a suit amid the garbage, you’ve probably found Manik Thapar, an Indo-Canadian entrepreneur who is setting aside conventional caste wisdom and getting his hands dirty.
Mr. Thapar joins a growing number of Indo-Canadians and Indo-Americans who are returning to India and investing in new businesses in anticipation of a growing consumer market. He sensed huge potential in the waste collection and management business, and while building his fortune figured he would also be doing a social service.
Garbage collection is hardly the most envied of businesses in India , where a caste hierarchy mandates that rubbish collection is not the domain of the educated and wealthy. Mr. Thapar didn’t care. India , which recycles more than 90 per cent of its waste, offered huge opportunities in waste management. Last April, he launched Eco Wise Waste Management Pvt. Ltd., providing a four-stage process of collection, transportation, treatment and disposal of waste material.
“I was doing my MBA in Michigan when I did a study on waste management and discovered the business potential for Eco Wise,” says Mr. Thapar as he inspects composting material on the two-acre property he has leased from a farmer.
He hoped to capitalize on India ’s seemingly endless consumption and waste production capacity and the lack of appropriate waste disposal systems. In Noida alone, 350 tons of waste are generated daily. Much of it was left along empty sites, a treasure hunt destination for the area’s many rag pickers and small-scale recycling businesses. But there was no organized approach to waste management.
He started out with big ideas. He teamed up with an American waste management company and planned to build a mechanized plant that could convert wet garbage into energy — compressed natural gas and electricity. But the ambitious plan, which required $16.5-million ( U.S. ) in seed capital, ran into bureaucratic hurdles.
He didn’t lose hope. In Barrie, Ont., he visited a mechanized de-worming plant and began to draw up plans to start a vermicomposting (worm composting) plant using the same process.
And so, with much reduced startup capital of $120,000 raised through bank loans and family assistance, Mr. Thapar launched Eco Wise. He set up 60 compost beds on leased land, hired 90 contract labourers and bought tons of red wringer worms to get his business off the ground and running. Then he went to the Resident Welfare Association of Noida in search of business. He offered free garbage collection, blue and green recycling bins and an education program to teach parents and children about environmental concerns and waste management. He started in April with two of Noida’s 130 municipal sectors, each of which contains 30,000 homes, and less than a year later is now handling four times as much waste for eight sectors in Noida.
Moreover, Eco Wise isn’t a classic small-scale Indian business. Mr. Thapar’s employees were drawn to his company because of its unusually protective labour practices. Mr. Thapar’s monthly costs include health benefits for all his workers. Employees and their families flock to the plant every Sunday for a free barbecue, and several of them will soon be provided free accommodation on company property. Most of them are migrant workers from Bihar and Bengal who make about 5,000 rupees ($133 Canadian) a month, a pittance by Canadian standards but above the average salary of a government worker.
Eco Wise is already the biggest plant of its kind in New Delhi and Noida. “We have the capacity of 100 tons per month. We are running at only 45 tons at the moment,” Mr. Thapar says. He hopes to be servicing all of Noida’s 130 sectors soon.
But all that’s only a short-term plan. What Mr. Thapar really wants to do is make energy out of waste and is excited about “bringing ideas that haven’t been tried and tested in India back here.” He wants to set up an anaerobic digestion plant, which takes wet garbage and converts it into compressed natural gas and electricity for domestic and commercial consumption.
For the time being, however, Mr. Thapar’s energies are focused on pushing people to be more enthusiastic about sorting through their garbage and using the recycling bins provided by Eco Wise. That, he acknowledges is an uphill task. “Even my friends told me, ‘Why are you getting into such a dirty business?’ It will take a long time to change that mentality.”

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