Interview with AAYUSHI KC, Founder & CEO of Khaalisisi

Congratulations Khaalisisi The Wastage Management Company!

StartupXs ChangeMakers Seed Funding 2023 Winner

Khaalisisi is the socially inclusive waste management platform dedicated to transforming Nepal’s waste dumping sector into the Waste Management sector. Denim For Difference is the project of Khaalisisi to reduce environmental hazards by reusing old jeans into bags. They involve single women to uplift the economic condition. 

Here is an interview with Aayushi KC Founder, CEO of Khaalisisi bringing forward her experience as a social entrepreneur. She was also named 30 Under 30 – Asia – Social Entrepreneurs in 2018. 

Can you tell us about the Denim project? 

Denim is a part of a program of “Khaalisisi”. Khaalisisi in general is a waste management company. When we started working, we used to get a lot of requests, especially for cloth waste. People used to have, a room full of old clothes that they didn’t know or have any idea of what to do with. One time we even received a truckload of old saris. Her mother had passed away and she wanted to give it away so that it could be managed in a sustainable way. Back then, we didn’t have the module to work with cloth wastage. The denim project started as an experimental project to work with fashion waste. We started collecting denim items, essentially jeans, because everybody owns a pair of jeans because of fast fashion trends, it’s easily available, and it’s cheap. So we thought of going to that particular item and started with around 1200 kilos of denim material. We combined that with our network of Khaalisisi friends, the informal waste entrepreneurs, and the network to run it scalably.

How is the Demin project shaping up? 

We are still running it. I am applying to different opportunities like yours- StartupXs ChangeMakers Seed Funding, to run it successfully. It’s a part of Khaalisisi. Now we have partnered with local NGOs and are working with women’s networks. And that’s when we entered into competitions like yours and thought that if we get the funding then, we can really think about running it parallelly, as part of our core business at Khaalisisi. With this competition, we hope to receive attention from other partners as well and get to network with them. 

What are your future plans with this winning amount?

We already have the operational plan now because we did it with 1200 kilos already, so we have the proof of concept and how it works. So the plan is just to roll with it and in the meanwhile, we will also raise funds and go for partnerships with other local NGOs as well, and then we will take it on a much larger scale outside the Kathmandu valley as well.

What motivates you to work for this? 

The problems about the undealt waste motivated us. There are so many types of waste that we haven’t directly dealt with. For example, medical waste, construction waste, and cloth waste. Doing a business, you also need to make sure that it’s sustainable and scalable to work as an industry and solve the problem as well. It was building up to start the business. Before starting it we obviously were aware of the problem like all of this can end in the landfill or is burned or incinerated. So there was the problem to include the Denim project in our main business before finding a scalable solution. So that was our main focus actually.

Can you briefly elaborate on khaalisisi? How did the idea generate and how are you still going on with this? 

Khaalisisi is a waste management company. It’s powered by local informal waste entrepreneurs. We call them Khaalisisi Friends. They’ve been operating or sustaining the work of collecting renewable waste products for more than five decades. They must be doing something right that’s why they’ve been sustaining this for more than fifty years. They have been collecting the waste materials by visiting the societies every day and asking for houses if people wanted to sell and buy from them.

In most South Asian countries, including Nepal, recycling is solely done in an informal or unrecognized way. And there is the misconception that informal is equal to illegal, which should not be the case. And there is a trend that tries to remove all informal entrepreneurs. But I think that is where our economy lies and it is the fundamental structure of the waste industry.

The waste entrepreneurs go to societies asking for the recyclable product but they could not enter inside a highly secured facility such as an embassy or government office or their voices wouldn’t even reach the ninth and 10th floors of apartment buildings. We can say that their access has been cut off in so many ways in this digital world. So we thought of the digital intervention or inclusion that could do to grow the network of this group, which can solve the growing issue of waste mismanagement in Nepal. The Khaalisisi works as a network of waste sellers and waste buyers. 

When did you start the Khaalisisi? Is it a company or social Enterprise?

We started it in 2017. And it’s a company. But a lot of people call it a social enterprise. 

Can we call you a social entrepreneur? 

I personally feel that every entrepreneur creates an impact on society. So, by default, they are social entrepreneurs, but I think it’s just one of those labels that have become a different genre in itself. Personally, I don’t feel there needs to be a label.  But If that labeling helps people to get into more socially tilted businesses, then why not? I am a social entrepreneur.

What do you want to tell the youths of Nepal who are interested in starting a business and having problems? Or can you tell us about your motivation for doing this kind of work? 

Waste is everywhere. You can’t ignore waste, from your Dustbin in your room, in the streets of Kathmandu, or in the rivers. And it’s not even a seasonal thing, it’s been there for 365 days a year. The issue with waste is that it is a bringing problem every single day but the sad part is it’s also becoming political propaganda which comes up as a problem twice a year during monsoon and when rates are suddenly hiked or streets of Kathmandu filled with waste. So there are multiple layers of issues in this ecosystem. 

I realize that we don’t have a waste industry at all. In Nepal, we do not manage the waste but what we do is transport the waste. We have trucks that come to pick up our waste, which is not even regular, they come in fuel-guzzling vehicles that are not environment-friendly, and they dump everything together in the same pile of garbage.  Even if our household puts some effort into separating our wasted sources, it won’t work because they mixed everything together in their trucks and sent it to the landfills.

So, what we need is a waste management industry. We need to manage it because if we do not manage them, then it is going to be a nuisance. In other countries waste has been used as a resource.

We should lead the example in the world that we even buy waste and recycle it and bring it back into the economy, creating jobs and products. I read the data which stated that there were 13,000 waste entrepreneurs only in Kathmandu in 2015. Which was a huge number for this small city. That’s when we got the idea of creating a bridge between the waste seller and waste entrepreneurs. 

So that was my motivation. 

What is your favorite aspect of being a social entrepreneur? Or tell us about the challenges that you faced while doing this kind of project.

As a startup in Nepal or in the world in general, there are a lot of challenges. Because what we did was that nobody had done before in Nepal, so we didn’t really have an example to learn from and it was all a hidden trial that took a lot of time, with so many issues but we kept going. When we see our Khaalisisi friends the real beneficiaries who understand the value of the platform are our favorite aspect.

 I still remember my first khaalisisi friend Ram Shah. When I met him for the first time, I explained the idea of Khaalisisi in a long speech that we wanna revolutionize the waste industry in Nepal. He laughed and said, “Who is going to call us to collect the recyclable product from their home? These people shoo us away”. I requested him to work for a month and after a month he told me that he made an extra income of Rs. 800 through our platform. And he is going to his village for holidays to celebrate his extra income with his six daughters and son. That was the validation of my idea that this platform can work. Then he got another friend onboard and we started to grow with our Khaalisisi friends. Now we have almost 250 Khaalisisi friends.

I remember another incident. We organized a Bada Dashain  (Nepal’s Big Festival) celebration for our Khaalisisi friends in one of the fine hotels in Kathmandu. On that day we waited for almost an hour and nobody showed up we started making calls and they said they are near the gate of the hotel and not sure if they were supposed to come inside. The problem was before when they used to come near the hotel the guards would shout at them. We asked them to come inside and then only they entered the hotel. During the program speech, one of our Khaalisisi friends said that the guard who used to shout at them saluted them at the gate today. No money can buy this kind of happiness. It was because we were able to create value and support for their work. It goes beyond money although that was not in my business plan this kind of thing motivates us. 

Nowadays, they have become very motivated and smart as well. At first, they didn’t even want to take their pictures, so we made the ID cards without pictures. But now they went for live interviews and giving sessions to our clients and children about reusable waste. So I think they feel motivated to work in this industry, and so many of them have returned from their labor work in other countries to join back as a khaalisisi friend. This is a very intangible outcome.

What piece of advice do you want to give to young students or people who are influenced by social entrepreneurs like you?

Entrepreneurship in itself is very difficult. You’ll get thousands of opinions before you start. So I’d say for a lot of students just get started. Try it out.

When you are a student you don’t have to feed your family because your family doesn’t depend on you. So students still have that luxury, that privilege to try something on their own of course without breaking the bank. If you start taking the opinions of so many people, you’ll easily get demotivated in the first step. So just go ahead and try executing the idea in your head. If it works, good and if it doesn’t, move on.

Click here to see the winning application entry.