“Earlier, there was no fixed salary. We didn’t get gloves, masks or shoes either.”

For Mohammad Rafiq, a 30-year-old from Bharatpur, Rajasthan, those words describe the conditions at his previous job. For years, he worked without basic safety equipment, predictable working hours or financial stability.

“The biggest problem I faced was the lack of time. I was unable to give time to my family. I was not able to work on time,” he says.

His experience reflects a larger challenge. Indian cities generate vast quantities of waste, while many urban centres still struggle with inefficient collection, poor segregation and expanding landfill sites. The people who handle this waste often remain invisible.

More than a decade ago, two engineering students began noticing the same problem.

Today, Abhishek Gupta and Abhinav Shekhar Vashistha are the co-founders of WeVOIS Labs, a Jaipur-based waste management company that uses technology to improve waste collection, segregation and recycling. Operating across more than 36 cities, it reaches 46 lakh citizens every day, supports the livelihoods of more than 2,000 sanitation workers and field staff, and has managed over seven lakh tonnes of waste.

But their journey began long before the company did.

A college cleanup drive sparked the idea

Abhishek grew up in Agra, while Abhinav spent his childhood in Jaipur. They met in 2012 while studying mechanical engineering at IIIT Jabalpur. Working together on college festivals, student bodies and campus projects, they discovered that their different strengths made them good problem-solving partners. Entrepreneurship soon entered their conversations.

In September 2014, in the weeks leading up to the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission on 2 October, the duo were selected to lead their college’s cleanliness initiative.

What began as a student responsibility soon drew more than 100 volunteers for brainstorming sessions, clean-up drives and community activities. The team also organised awareness programmes and a half-marathon that attracted thousands.

The campaign ended on 2 October. The questions it raised did not.

“After that, we could not unsee waste,” says Abhishek.

They began noticing overflowing bins, dumping grounds and growing piles of garbage everywhere. They read reports and studied urban sanitation systems. Delhi’s Ghazipur landfill frequently appeared in the media, but they realised similar waste mountains existed across the country.

“One thing that stood out was that nearly half of urban waste was coming from households. We realised that if cities wanted to solve their waste problem, municipal solid waste had to be part of the solution,” Abhishek recalls.

They also saw a gap in how cities tracked where waste was collected, how it moved and what happened afterwards. For two engineers, the next question came naturally: could technology make the system work better?

After graduating in 2016, Abhishek joined IIT Delhi for research, while Abhinav moved to IIT Bombay. Both, however, felt drawn towards solving problems people encountered in everyday life.

“We wanted to build something that people could use directly in their everyday lives,” Abhinav tells The Better India.

By 2018, the questions that had stayed with them since college had turned into something more concrete. The friends began exploring how technology could help cities collect........

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