By Business India Editorial

Excel Industries’ journey into waste management started at Mandvi, Kutch in the late 1980s. The company dug trenches on unproductive Kutch land, and deposited vegetable waste from the market to decompose into compost. This simultaneously solved two problems – the city’s garbage being treated and an improvement in soil health and productivity.

Realising the potential in waste composting, experiments began at Excel’s Mumbai factory. Truckloads of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) were called for and sprinkled with cow dung water. The company was successful in eliminating the odour and reducing the composting time cycle to 30 days. Research created ‘Excel Process’ for treating MSW into compost which utilised two of Excel’s in-house products – ‘Bioculum’, a composting inoculant and ‘Sanitreat’, an odour control agent.

Being able to manage mixed MSW helped the company in commissioning centralised waste management plants across India. The compost could be now circulated back to the peri-urban and rural areas as a fertiliser for farmlands.

Excel’s Ahmedabad City Compost plant treats a total of 300 tonnes of MSW on a daily basis, and the plant has treated nearly 15 lakh tonnes of MSW. With the introduction of the Municipal Solid Wastes (Management & Handling) Rules 2000, scientific waste treatment was mandated. This led to the setting up of about 15 MSW plants across India using ‘Excel Process’ with a cumulative treatment capacity of about 15 lakh tonnes MSW annually.

While working with these plants, Excel saw a more efficient decentralised waste management model for Indian cities where the waste wasn’t required to travel long distances to reach the centralised MSW plant. Research activities aimed to create an at-source solution for segregated organic waste.

The Organic Waste Converter (OWC) System was born in 2007 which offered a composting solution in a timeframe of 15 days. Over the years, the process and products were iterated to suit the changing needs of the customers. A fully automated waste converter, ‘Bioneer’, was introduced in 2014 to cater to the market which sought for a fast conversion solution.

Till date, the company has installed over 3,000 machines, pan India across multiple segments – real estate, health care, educational institutions, religious centres and defence establishments – to help them compost their waste. Companies with an objective to serve the community through their CSR ventures have also been active customers.

Service at doorstep The year 2014 witnessed the start of a nation-wide movement, Swachh Bharat which urged the citizens to become more responsible about the waste they generate. City-wise evaluation campaigns like the Swachh Survekshan proved fruitful in having the city administrators drive these campaigns for their cities. The SWM Rules revised in 2016 upheld on the alarming waste situation in the country and called for immediate actions. Bulk waste generators were mandated to treat their own waste while at individual levels, the terms ‘waste management’ and ‘composting’ were fast percolating into every household.

The need for a hassle-free, ‘at-your-doorstep’ waste treatment solution led to the inception of ‘MobiTrash’, a daily waste management service solution available on a monthly subscription model. Launched in 2015 in Pune, MobiTrash is a user-friendly solution for city dwellers. Its success led to launches in Surat, Mumbai, Rajkot and Ahmedabad. The professional service is IT-driven and offers daily pick-up, hassle-free online service management and delivery of compost to its subscribers.

The absence of a solution for facilities generating waste within 25-100 kg per day resulted in the launch of ORCOmin, a low-cost, compact composter in 2018. Unlike its industrial predecessors, ORCOmin has aesthetics similar to modern-day kitchen appliances, enabling easy maintenance and use. With increasing awareness and hence, the increasing demand for more composting machines, ORCOmin had been designed to enable mass production.

Keeping the tradition of People, Planet, Profit alive, this journey of Excel showcases the willingness and ability to address national problems, not always with a commercial motive, but many times resulting into business opportunities.