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From Cleaning up Balance Sheets to Cleaning up Roads, This Ex-Indian Banker is Taking Her Appetite for Clean India to Entrepreneurs Naina Lal Kidwai believes one of the failures in India is the public sector particularly its municipalities have not vacated the space so that are entrepreneur can prosper. "If a space is difficult to enter, no entrepreneur enters that ecosystem"

By Aashika Jain

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While speaking to Entrepreneur India on why waste management is an entrepreneurial opportunity in India, Naina Lal Kidwai Chairman-India Advisory Board, Advent International said that if we look at the ability for India to gain from green jobs, we will understand how huge an opportunity stands before us.

"We can have the estimates provided by the NSDC and they are huge in renewable energy like solar, wind also and then the whole waste management space where over thirty per cent of the green jobs are expected to come from the waste management space so the issue is here there is a crime need, India needs this, everyone is crying out for the service but we do not have entrepreneur and private sector engagement to take care of this," Kidwai said in an interview to Entrepreneur India.

She believes one of the failures in India is the public sector particularly its municipalities have not vacated the space so that are entrepreneur can prosper. "If a space is difficult to enter, no entrepreneur enters that ecosystem," says Kidwai.

In India, some states are seeing amazing partnerships that are working. Kidwai thinks we are for- profit model in faecal sludge management, in waste management, in cleaning of toilets and maintaining toilets our business proposition. If someone is making money there is no issue because it's a profitable business and we need to create more of these where these public services are provided for a price we have seen even water, poor families will pay for it because they get no drinking water,

"We know if only 30 per cent of the faecal sludge is treated and 70 per cent remains there to be treated, there is an opportunity to step in there, provided the model is right government allows a for-profit business to operate providing that service," Kidwai said.

She explained that in India waste management is a big problem there is no private entrepreneur in this field whereas it's a profit-making field also, also a lot of faecal sludge remains untreated which clearly states that there is a lot of scope in there.

Another question was asked about the power to influence as a woman leader. Kidwi said that from the sanitation perspective where some of the men and women started in India, sanitation collation with the view to providing a platform for all players be it big, small, NGOs, donors companies with CSR to come into and to exchange information and to collaborate so the one role which women are very good is at collaboration, the replication becomes possible through collaboration, we are able to scale up than this become opportunity if leaders can ensure collaboration across sectors those are really suspicious about each other those are really sustainable models, where the best partnerships are where government corporate citizens and NGOs come together and those are the really sustainable model.

Aashika Jain

Entrepreneur Staff

Former Associate Editor, Entrepreneur India

Journalist in the making since 2006! My fastest fingers have worked for India's business news channel CNBC-TV18, global news wire Thomson Reuters, the digital arm of India’s biggest newspaper The Economic Times and Entrepreneur India as the Digital Head. 
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