Abhinav Shekhar Vashistha, Co-founder and CTO, WeVOIS Labs Pvt Ltd
Image: Madhu Kapparath; Directed By: Kapil Kashyap Background Photo: Shutterstock
WeVois was founded in 2018, but Abhinav Shekhar Vashistha (29, co-founder and CTO) and Abhishek Gupta’s (31, co-founder and CEO) waste management journey started in college in 2016. From organising zero-waste college festivals to creating an app to list public toilets, and dustbins, in Balmer, Rajasthan, or building smart dustbins, the duo isn’t new to waste management.
Abhinav Shekhar Vashistha (29)
Co-founder and CTO, WeVOIS Labs Pvt Ltd
What has changed, though, over the years, is the shift from a project-based mindset to their commitment to build a scalable, sustainable and profitable waste management business.
WeVois was incorporated in 2018 to provide an Internet-of-Things-enabled door-to-door smart waste collection facility for urban areas. This is important because traditional methods often miss 30 to 40 percent households, leading to open dumping or burning of waste.
The company’s app creates an optimised route after surveying an area—including “polluters” like residences, hotels, hostels, hospitals and so on, accounting for the number of collection vehicles available and the collection time. The driver then gets an optimised route on an app, with estimated speed and time to complete the route.
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Every property that has signed up for WeVois’s collection services is marked with an RFID tag. The waste collectors read the RFID tag at every collection point to mark “attendance” and ensure efficient and safe collection. The RFID system also helps calculate monthly salaries and reward based on performance.
Currently, the company is working with 20 municipalities in Rajasthan and running pilots in Dehradun and Jammu & Kashmir. It employs 1,000 workers directly while 500 others are registered on the app via other companies that use their technology for waste collection. WeVois says its employees are given social benefits, most of them for the first time, including health insurance.
However, collection is just one part of the gargantuan waste management challenge. Apart from providing a regular waste collection facility and employment for over 1,000 people, WeVois also acts as a reliable waste provider to recyclers. Vashishtha says there are enough waste processing plants in every city, but they are not operational due to unreliable or contaminated waste. WeVois also segregates waste and has set up its processing plants.
Also read: This company manages nearly 90% of Mumbai’s municipal waste
Bootstrapped from 2018 till 2021, the company received a ₹20 lakh grant from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in 2022. In the same year, it also raised ₹4.4 crore in a seed round from Innovana ThinkLabs and UPAYA social ventures. So far, in 2025, the company has raised ₹36 crore in Series A from Negen Capital, Vyom Ventures, Marshot (Razorpay founders), SN Capital, and other high net-worth individuals.
Vashistha explains that the duo aims to run their venture like a business and not only a social impact venture. He claims the company has been profitable since the first month of operations and all the money raised goes into expansion, new projects, pilots and research. In FY24, the company clocked ₹33 crore in revenues and a profit after tax (PAT) of ₹2.91 crore. The company estimates it will close FY25 with a revenue of ₹50 crore with approximately 10 percent PAT.
Galloping to create 100 zero-waste cities in India over the next decade, Vashishtha is optimistic that India can solve its waste problem. It won’t be easy though: “User behaviour has to change and India’s densely populated cities might just make it cost-effective.”
Swami Prem Parivartan aka Peepal Baba, Forbes India Under 30 jury for the category, says, “Their vision to expand presence to over 500 cities and empowering an additional 20,000 workers is remarkable. Their future potential is immense.”
(This story appears in the 07 February, 2025 issue
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