Chennai: You know that your area has entered the e-age when a start-up comes to pick up your trash. This is what kuppathotti.com has been doing since it started 11 November 2011.
They come to your doorstep free of cost to collect your household junk like milk cover, old newspapers, plastic, iron scrap, aluminum, to name a few.
The service is based in Ashok Nagar in the city. Founder Joseph Jegan was working for an MNC but always wanted to improve the environment or make some impact through his love to keep his surroundings clean. Whenever he disposed of the trash at home, he would segregate it before throwing it away.
“I was held up with my work and wasn’t able to dispose of them properly,” he says. He then googled to see if there was any firm that would come and collect the trash from his home. He found none. An idea struck him at the time: why not start his own trash collecting business?
“I soon started thinking that I should create a business module. I wanted it to be an IT-enabled concept,” he points out.
Joseph slowly started researching in-depth about his future business. “I went to several shops who were into trash collection,” he says.
“I learned how they did it, about the way they collected the trash and segregated it.”
He finally concluded that this was a business that could run through an online presence.
It took him nearly three months to reach just 100 customers but after his work slowly got the approval of and appreciation from residents even from surrounding areas and his customers have skyrocketed to nearly 40,000.
Joseph trained his team on how to collect the trash from homes and appropriately compartmentalise them based on the material.
He also adds that for the past few months, he has seen a reduction in the consumption of plastic by the general public. “People are become aware of its harm,” he says.
So far, the Kuppathotti team has collected several tonnes of trash and they are given for recycling purpose.
“I would say that it a business-cum-service as our customers are better in understanding the importance of carefully dumping trash,” says Joesph. “We still have customers who came to us when we first started,” he beams with pride.
Joseph is hopeful of bringing his concept to more cities and towns across India. His team is coming up with new ideas that will soon be implemented to attract more people to create a better environment. Joseph runs his office at First Avenue, Ashok Nagar and for details, visit www.kuppathotti.com