Smart waste: Jose Jacob Kallarakal

After after completing his engineering degree in the late 1990s, Jose Jacob Kallarakal joined his father’s company. The company built buses and other vehicles, but Kallarakal had bold plans to steer it in an entirely new direction.

"I was very fascinated with garbage compactors because I thought this would be a future solution," he recalls. "So we fabricated one or two compactors, and we went around to sell them on the market."

When governmental bodies began to regulate against the open burning of solid waste and specified trash should be hauled in closed-bodied vehicles in the interest of public health, Kallarakal saw a perfect business opportunity.

At first, he approached the municipality offering to sell the compactors, but it proposed that the company provide the full service. So Kallarakal hired engineers, drivers, cleaners and other necessary employees and implemented the service. The revenue model involved charging the government per ton of garbage collected.

"That concept clicked," he says.

Turning waste into energy

Today, Kallarakal is Chairman and Managing Director of Antony Waste Handling Cell, which he co-founded in 2000. The company began by contracting with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, which governs Mumbai, then quickly expanded, taking on several other contracts as well.

"The privatization concept started and once it did, many municipalities realized that instead of owning and managing the trucks and manual labor, it was best to outsource the entire solid waste management work," he explains.

Business grew rapidly for several years, with the company raising private equity funds in 2007. Eventually, it also entered the waste processing business, using technical acumen to offer newer technologies.

"In the past, everywhere was an open dump, but now we are processing waste and doing it scientifically," Kallarakal says.

Two technologies Antony Waste Handling Cell uses to process waste include bioreactor technology and aerobic composting. It sells the compost it produces from the aerobic composting and also generates gas, which is used to power the plants and is an additional revenue source when it is sold.

"We are now an end-to-end solution, from collection and transportation up to disposal," Kallarakal reveals.

He explains that part of the processing involves removing organics at a segregation facility, and has noticed more textiles and plastics in recent times.

"As the economy is growing, people are using more and throwing away more of their old textiles; they don’t reuse these like before," he says.

A bright future

In 2021, Antony Waste Handling Cell completed its initial public offering, and Kallarakal sees many opportunities for growth in the coming years, as it continues to turn waste into energy. The company is running Maharashtra’s first waste-to-energy project at Moshi, Pimpri, a 14-megawatt integrated plant with the capacity to process 1,000 metric tons of solid waste daily.

"I would say in India, over the next 10 years, there’s only going to be growth in the waste sector because every city wants to have a waste disposal system," he predicts.

"If you don’t dispose of the waste scientifically, it becomes a problem for the city because there will be more backlogs of waste lying in different parts. Scientific disposal is a must, and many cities are facing a problem with this."

However, the high capital cost of setting up a power plant is a challenge for many municipalities. When some municipalities can’t afford a waste energy plant, Kallarakal says they often go with a simpler composting system at a lower cost.

Another trend he has noticed is that centralized waste disposal systems are also becoming more popular.

"Some of the municipal states have a different approach," he points out. "They collect the waste from different cities and bring it to a centralized waste disposal location. We have seen this in many developed countries like the United States and Europe. "

As Antony Waste Handling Cell continues to expand, Kallarakal says it appreciates the collection and transportation side of the business, since it results in revenue fairly quickly once it becomes established.

Diversifying operations

Beyond collection, transportation and waste processing, the company also works in other areas. For example, it has a plant in western Mumbai focusing on construction debris in that region, and the firm is investigating auto and tire recycling as a potential future option.

"The diversity has always been there with us," Kallarakal says. "We are always careful in our approach. We don’t want to lose money because when you diversify, there’s a risk involved."

Apart from continuously eyeing new opportunities, he says his team’s engineering and automotive backgrounds also make them stand out from the competition.

"Our team comes from an automobile background," he says. "Some of us are very well aware of the trucks and the garbage and all the engineering parts. So that’s our strength.

"Our operation maintenance costs are on the lower side, and we know how to make optimum utilization of our trucks."

Good relationships with suppliers are also key to the company’s success. Kallarakal says it mainly purchases trucks from Ashok Leyland and Tata, both companies it has worked with for more than two decades, as well as a number of small and medium-size suppliers that provide additional parts.

The company also works extensively with Kanadevia Corporation (formerly Hitachi Zosen), a Japanese company that sets up a wide variety of plants and technology solutions around the world.

These strong partnerships, along with decades of business acumen and a visionary mindset, are what helps Antony Waste Handling Cell succeed and help communities by providing vital solutions for waste management.