India is slowly discovering its path to a cleaner, greener and more sustainable future. In line with the country’s declaration in the Paris Climate Accords, we have been brainstorming to improve our waste & pollution management. Not just the government, but start-ups with innovative ideas are also striving to transform these challenges into productive avenues of upcycling, recycling, and energy generation. While some of them are involved in core aspects of managing, segregation, and transportation, few of them are focusing on leveraging technological capabilities to create socio-economic impact and integrate the disparate core aspects seamlessly. EarthRon is noteworthy among such players.
The company has already developed software solutions for the management of Bio-Medical Waste & Solid-Waste in India. They are leveraging digital technology to enable Front Line Workers (FLW) to adopt digital platforms with zero data entries.
Uncovering the Purpose
The founders of Earthron, Rajbir Singh and Sandeep Ganguly carry immense expertise in corporate, especially in technology and IT services. After almost 25 years of corporate life, they wanted to work with MSME segment and design cost effective digital platforms. They explored and analysed various markets and shortlisted the waste management segment.
The founders shared, “We joined hands with one of our colleagues who was part of this industry and began to learn more by obtaining formal training and attending workshops on waste management, environmental sustainability, and more. We got the broad understanding and initially thought of setting up a Bio Medical Waste Management Plant. Goa was our first choice because there was no common waste treatment facility, and it could be implemented from scratch. We met many officials and did the groundwork, but the core business of setting up the plant localised our impact to a single city/state. We thought through and plunged into developing comprehensive ERP platform designed to serve multiple plants across the country and globally. This was a large canvas which made the opportunity exciting and challenging. That marked the start of Earthrons journey.”
Creating an Impact
EarthRon signed up its first customer (Waste Code in Rajashthan) even before the platform was deployed in production. The promoter of Waste Code Mr. Arvind Bhardwaj, whose company services multiple districts in Rajasthan for Bio Medical Waste, was convinced about the solutions and its benefits. He gave us lot of insights on the challenges faced by the FLW’s in his business which helped us design the solution to be user friendly. The Apps do not need the FLWs to punch in any data, everything is done by a combination of GPS, Bluetooth and Camera. This allowed Waste-Code to train their drivers and Hospital attendents in less than an hour. Due to the user friendly experience the adoption of the digital platform in Waste-Code is 100% today.
The Covid pandemic brought the challenge of increasing Bio Medical Waste to the forefront and highlighted the importance of having a system which can track and trace the waste from generation to destruction or recycling. This has to be done without overloading the FLW’s and by creating a credible and secure information system.
The software is live in the Northern States of India for Bio-Medical Waste Management, with over 10,000+ Health Care Facilities (HCF/ HCE). Moreover, EarthRon is the recipient of Letter of Appreciation for CII 3R awards 2022 announced on 30th Nov during International Conference on Waste to Worth under the category: Excellence in Innovative Solutions by Start-up for Sustainable Waste Management.
The company got an opportunity to develop our second digital platform for tracking Municipal Solid Waste in 2021. “We enabled CMC in Udupi to track the type and quantity of nine different categories of waste from 35 Ward to various Destination (Composting, MRF, Landfill etc.). We introduced a BYOD model successfully for the drivers as many were on contract. We are exploring to replicate the solution is more ULBs/ cities.”
One-of-a-kind Solution
The company has built a Cloud-based “EWP - EarthRon Waste Processor” Platform and is offering “software as a service” to manage the operations related to Waste collection, transportation and processing. The Software is primarily used by waste management and recycling companies to effectively plan their operations, manage assets, and ensure scheduled maintenance is carried out on time.
“We assure improved Operational efficiency and Real-time tracking of Waste along with management of vehicles/fleets/routes in various industries. We are focused on ensuring that field staff are able to use the tool with minimal efforts. Moreover, the success of any IT Tool depends on its acceptance by the field staff. Essentially, we have built an inventory management solution for tracking of waste generated by various sources, management of routes, tracking of recycled material and much more. Earthron’s EWP offers secure data collection, immutable records and complete transparency along with benefits like tracking gaps in servicing customers with on-screen graphical tools. It offers flexibility to allow customers to generate, print and scan their QR codes, track productivity of all users and assets online and maintain records of sanitised material dispatched to authorised recyclers, raise challans, etc.” Rajbir and Sandeep mentioned.
Any organisation involved in Collection, Transportation and Processing of waste and wanting to have a single Dashboard to monitor their operations in real-time, EarthRon is the right partner.
