Co-Founder
Vivek Kumar
Working at the intersection of entrepreneurship, sustainability, waste management and social impact, with a focus on building practical solutions for a more circular economy.
- Based in
- Bihar, India
- Practice
- Operations and field research
- Contact
- [email protected]
- Profile
Background
Vivek Kumar works on the operational side of waste: collection from institutions and businesses, segregation, moving recovered material to the people who can actually use it, and the unglamorous logistics in between. RecyclingBazar was founded in 2017 to do that work commercially, and most of what he understands about the subject came from doing it rather than from reading about it.
That experience produced a set of questions rather than a set of answers. Why does segregation hold in one ward and collapse in the next? What happens to the income of the people already recovering material when a system is formalised around them? Why do two schemes that look identical on paper produce completely different results a year later?
Those questions are the reason Circular Journey exists. They have been answered, partially and in specific places, by people who built working systems elsewhere — and almost none of that knowledge is written down in a form useful to someone making a decision in an Indian city. Circular Journey is an attempt to go and ask those people directly, write down what they say including the parts that failed, and test the most promising ideas under Indian conditions instead of assuming they transfer.
He leads the field research: where it goes, what it asks, and how what comes back is written up.
A problem worth solving is worth understanding from every possible angle.
What I work on
Operations and field research
Building and running the thing itself
The collection and recovery operation, the digital platforms behind both ventures, and the field research programme — where it goes, what it asks each system, and how the findings are published. The questions the research framework asks came out of running the operation, which is why it concentrates on operating cost, informal-sector livelihoods and what happens after the launch rather than on technology.
Education
Both founders hold the same three qualifications. None of them is in waste management — what they give is a way of looking at it.
- Accounts (Honours)Graduate degree
- Whether a system can pay for itself. Cost, margin and who actually carries them is how a case study gets past the launch photographs to the question that decides everything: is this still running in five years, and on whose money? A model that works only while it is subsidised is a pilot, not a solution.
- SociologyMaster of Arts
- Waste is usually discussed as a materials problem and measured in tonnes. Sociology asks what the tonnage hides: who handles the material, how society regards them, why the work carries stigma, and who captures the value recovered from what other people discard.
- LawLLB
- A circular economy needs more than recycling infrastructure. Who holds the right to collect? Who is recognised as a worker? Who is accountable when a system fails, and what recourse does anyone have? Law is where those questions get answered, or ignored.
Stated as a perspective rather than as expertise. A degree in a subject is not a professional qualification in the work it is applied to, and this page does not present it as one.
Ventures
RecyclingBazar
2017 · OperatingA waste management and resource-recovery venture working on organised collection of recyclable material from institutions, businesses and other bulk generators, and moving it to recyclers who can process it.
www.recyclingbazar.comGardeningBazar
OperatingAn online platform for gardening products and supplies, aimed at making it easier for households and communities to grow and maintain green space.
www.gardeningbazar.com
Recognition
- 2026Certificate of AppreciationDistrict Administration, Buxar · Awarded for the business
- 2025Viksit Bharat Young Leaders DialogueNational Youth Festival 2025 · Invited as a Youth Icon
- 2025SOUL Leadership ConclaveSchool of Ultimate Leadership · Selected delegate, one of 200 from across India
- 2020Startup BiharGovernment of Bihar · Recognised startup
- 2019Startup JharkhandGovernment of Jharkhand · Recognised startup
- 2017Startup IndiaGovernment of India · Recognised startup
Get in touch
Email reaches both founders directly, and anything sent to it is read. If you run a system worth studying, know someone who does, or think something on this site is wrong, that is the fastest route.