8. Sustainable waste leader Shubham Lakra on the 'Green Fence' ban, bringing more transparency to dealing with post-industrial scraps, and the support of EDHEC's entrepreneurial community

Hello, bonjour, ni hao, and salut. Welcome back to the Impact around the World podcast. I'm Cassandra Pitman, EDX Country Manager for the UK and Ireland and host of the show. In this episode, I'm pleased to be joined by Subham Lakra, a 2017 graduate on EdX Master's in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management program. Subham is a sustainable waste entrepreneur who together with a fellow EDEC alumnus, is bringing more transparency and professionalism when dealing with post industrial and post consumer scraps launched. Just as China enacted the green fence ban on foreign waste materials and waste managers were scratching their heads seeking solutions, Subhan and Pierre saw an opportunity and with the help of the EDEC incubator, they launched Brake, which now works with clients across the us, Europe and Asia. So let's take it away and enjoy the show with Subhem.

BlackRock. Subham, welcome.

Thank you, Cassandra.

Just for our listeners who may not be familiar with it, can you let us know what is the green fence ban, what does it entail, and why is it important in the world of recycling and sustainability?

So actually, green fence ban was enacted in late 2016, early 2017, by the Chinese government because there was a lot of, you know, let's say trash of the world coming to China, especially from the western countries, you know, like America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, they were all dumping their scrap in China. You know, it was unsorted, you know, low quality scrap which was unprocessed. So it was causing a lot of pollution problems in China. So the Chinese government, you know, just decided to ban it. And just overnight it was, you couldn't send your scrap to China. So all the western countries were scrambling for new solution. So that's when we entered the business.

Okay, and describe to us what you do. How do you solve that problem?

So at the moment, we had just entered the business in 2017, and we kind of provided a new solution to all the scrap yards here in Europe, especially in France, Belgium and Netherlands, providing an alternate market going to India, for example, or to Pakistan or to Bangladesh. Because overnight, to find new clients, to find new outputs for all these craps. It was very, very difficult. And we had good connections in those regions, so we provided quick solutions for big volumes.

Okay, amazing. And how did you decide to do this? I mean, you obviously enrolled on the entrepreneurship and innovation course at edec. Did you come into the program having this particular idea or did you just think you might want to be an.

Entrepreneur one so actually I envisioned to be an entrepreneur, but not specially doing this course at EDEC. I actually enrolled in 2014 under the Chronicle program, the MIM, and I did my first year, which is quite generic for everyone. And then you do a little internship over one year. And then I was a little bit confused, you know, which route to take because Eric gives you a lot of options, you know, for the final year. So. And it's not necessarily, you know, obvious that you, you choose entrepreneurship because it's not the classic route taken by, by everyone. So, you know, then I decided, you know, I saw the curriculum, you know, luckily I was already there for, for, you know, more than one year, you know, trying to, to see with different professors, you know, studying with, you know, under certain professors, which actually ended up, you know, being my professors in, in the entrepreneurship track as well. So, yeah, I just, let's say stumbled upon this, this course and then I just decided to go through with it and it was a experience.

What drew you initially to EDX Grande de Cole program?

So I was actually looking, you know, at an international experience. I had a few options in US in uk and one day, you know, going through all these options, I came across this education fair at Orleans Francaise in New Delhi. And then I decided to just, you know, go there as I was visiting, you know, other education fairs, for example, one organized by the British Embassy as well, one by the American Embassy, and this was organized by Alliance Francaise. So after visiting, you know, all your inspiration, I came across, you know, different Chronicle programs from, you know, EDICT from other business schools. And EDX program seemed to be the right mix. The curriculum was, you know, very interesting. It was very engaging, especially when you have a one year internship in the middle. So you get, you know, kind of a work experience, a real life experience in between your studies. So that was really nice. And there was an opportunity for scholarship as well. So I ended up applying for that as well. And I got a scholarship from Eric as well, which was quite generous. So all these factors played into, you know, me deciding to go to France and to come to edhec and yeah, like it, I would say it's like one of the best decisions of my life.

Why is that?

I could have never imagined the way things, you know, were going to turn out. So it's, it's, you know, from India. You don't choose a country where you don't speak English, you know, plain and simple.

How is your French these days?

Well, it's, it's been, you know, progressing right now. I'm Nivo Badu, so that's already quite good. And I'm still learning a lot. I try to do my business as well in French now. And we speak in French with a lot of our clients, our suppliers. So I've learned a lot of business French as well. So it's been good. Yeah.

So you started Breadlock with a co founder, another EDHEC alum. Tell us about how that relationship came about and how you decided to launch this business together.

Very, very interesting, actually, how Pierre and I met, like, again, everything goes back to Eric and thanks to Eric. So I met Pierre in one of the TICD workshops, that is the Talent Identification and Career Development workshops, wherein you're assigned a mentor who guides you to prepare. For example, preparing for an interview to get hired or going through your CV and trying to refine those things for you, trying to refine your speech in an interview. So that's where I met Pierre. And I shouldn't say this out aloud, but actually we never discussed my CV or anything. We never worked on me per se, because we just got involved in talking about, you know, this project I had at the time, which was developing a plastic recycling aggregator website, something like, you know, Alibaba or Amazon, but for recyclables. And we just got involved in talking about it, and we just kept talking for six months, even outside of it. But we just then one day decided, okay, this seems to be interesting. Let us set up a company together and, you know, with no concrete goals. Let's say we just set up this company together and we just thought, okay, you know, let's just give it a try. And that's how Bread like came into existence in April 2017.

And what has been the journey that you've gone on that Bread like has gone on? I mean, if you started with. With no concrete goals or vision for the future, how have you refined that into what the business is today?

So it's been quite a learning process, actually. When we started in 2017, of course we had sort of a vision that we're going to do something interesting and big together. But how big? How interesting? We had no idea how to get. There was still a little bit kind of a jumble in our mind. So we started in 2017 in April, but actually we didn't close our first business deal till almost end of September. This is quite a long time to have a company and not do anything about it. We were still struggling to see how we could push the business ahead. So we were lucky that because of our network in India, we had clients who were always asking for different kind of recyclables and we were pushed to go out and look for things in the market. And we had a really good support where clients would pay us up front and this would give us a lot of leverage to go out and buy from French companies. So that's how we started. And since then, step by step, learning through the process, you know, what does the client exactly want, what are the processes we need to put in place, how do we organize the logistics of this whole process, which is one of the biggest part. So how does the documentation take place? When you're sending goods from Europe towards Asia, there's a lot of legal issues that you have to take care as well because you're dealing with sensitive stuff, you're dealing with scrap. So step by step, we learned it over several months over the last few years. And then we just kept growing our business. Starting from France, we started buying in Belgium, then we moved towards Netherlands and Germany, covering different markets. And similarly on the client side, we started with India, but we moved on to include Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, all those countries in our client portfolio. And then a couple of years ago, we also set up an office in Spain, you know, to capture the south of France, Spain and Portuguese market.

How many people are you employing total now?

At this moment, we are six people working in the company full time.

Wow, that's amazing. Tell me about your time in the incubator.

Oh, actually, I should have told you before like that. That rings a bell in my mind. Between April and the end of the year, end of the year 2017, we were incubated at EDEC for all those initial months of our company where we were just like babies in this business. Very, very interesting and very, very educative time, I must say, because we got in a lot of advices from our colleagues around there, other startups who were doing, you know, similar stuff like us or doing, you know, some. Somebody was, for example, trying to set up a restaurant, somebody was trying to set up a website. But the challenges are more or less the same in any, you know, any given business because you got to find out what your customer needs. You got to find out, you know, how you can get the attention of your supplier, what are the, you know, positive things that you can take from other businesses to try and include in your business. So the whole ecosystem of the EDIC incubator is very educative and you also get a lot of advices from your professors. Because in my particular case I had Jean Michel Letroux at the time who was the director of the entrepreneurship program and also he was at the incubator. So I got a lot of useful advices because he had been an entrepreneur before. He had a few successful businesses in the past. So he helped us gather a lot of insights from his experience as an entrepreneur.

And have you, as you've progressed and you've left the accelerator, you have your headquarters now in Lille and international offices. Have you stayed in touch with that entrepreneurial ecosystem? Are they still people that you bounce ideas off of? Is there any value post your time in the accelerator itself?

Yes. So I am in touch with Edict on regular basis. Both Pierre and me, in fact, we do have, you know, we still kind of are always linked to the Edict network. Maybe not specifically to the incubator, but always connected to the network, to other Edict entrepreneurs. I have a lot of friends, you know, who set up businesses, for example, in Paris or in south of France and we graduated together. Similarly, Pierre has a lot of his friends from Edict, a lot more than I have and who are set up now. He has friends set up all over the world. So we do keep in touch, we do keep exchanging information. What's going on in their industry, what's going on in our industry, how we can make use of new trends in our respective businesses. That's the business side. And then on the other side, we are also in regular touch with the Attic carrier department. So we have had three interns from edX so far. So one intern worked with us for one full year and two of them worked for something like four or five months with us. So and we want to continue this in future as well. Keep hiring from Edec and why not a full time position in the future?

I hope the interns have been top performers.

That's why we keep going back.

So I'm curious, did you start this business because you had a pre existing interest in or passion for or desire to contribute positively towards sustainability or. Or is sustainability just kind of like the auxiliary thing? You just saw a business opportunity and, and you just jumped on it.

So, Cassandra, it's a mix of factors actually. I have a family who's into the recycling business for now, 35 years back in India. So they had been doing this for a long time. And while I was growing up, you know, it's. It was just natural for me to always visit my dad's factory at the time, see the whole recycling process going on. There used to be a chamber at the top of my father's office in the factory from where you had this big glass window and you could see the whole factory from there and how the recyclables would come in, how they would be sorted out and how things would be recycled. So I was always kind of intrigued to see this trash coming in and on the other end you have this raw material which you could use to make plenty of things. So I saw the whole journey growing up, so I was always intrigued and entrusted. And it was just natural for me to be inclined towards this business. And also a lot of my family members are just into business. So it's quite natural when you're coming from a family like that to be inclined towards those ideas of setting up something on your own, you know, adding value to something to create something else. So it's, it's been from, from let's say those roots of mine.

And did you always have a thought that you would, you know, be going to EDHEC and stay in Europe and potentially be an entrepreneur here or had you initially thought you might return to India or somewhere in Asia?

I had thought that I would go back because that's my comfort zone. You know, you have a lot of help and it's much easier when you're able to do things in your local language. So being here was not, you know, on the horizon on a long term. But as things turned out very differently, I'm quite happy the way they turned out. But yeah, initially I had never thought that my life would take this turn and I would be sitting here in Lille running this business.

So what is your medium long term vision for Breadlock? I mean, however far you can think into the future. I know it's, it's, this is a fast moving, fast moving industry. Fast moving, you know, when you're an entrepreneur, no matter what you're doing. But however far you can think into the future, what is your vision for the company?

So as Pierre and I have been discussing this over the past few weeks, we have these strategy sessions, you know, every few months to realign the goals of the company, to re envision our vision for the company. And what we have come up with, and we are going to do it is we're going to turn this business into 100 million euro company in the next five years. We're going to have a bigger team, we're going to keep hiring. We already have some plans to hire at least two more business developers this year and we have been having a two digit, a double digit digit growth over the last four years and now we are going to get past that linear expansion phase and we are going to, to have an exponential growth over the next five years.

What has been your hardest or most challenging thing that you've come up against in your entrepreneurial journey?

So far, the biggest challenge has been staying away from my family, which has been my support system, and going through the highs and lows of my life without having my loved ones to share it with. So as I'm living alone here, I have had so many tough periods as an entrepreneur. Every entrepreneur has it in their journey, but, you know, to be able to handle yourself in situations where your support system is not there for you, and in my case, my support system happens to be my family, has been quite challenging, although I've managed to somewhat, you know, overcome that by, you know, building my own network here, trying to build a life here. And I have a lot of friends here. It's not exactly the same feeling that you get, but, yeah, so that's been quite challenging.

Yeah. And I imagine that that would have been made worse by the. By the pandemic and not even being able to fly. Were you able to fly home? I'm guessing not, no, not really.

I did fly once, but then it was so tough that I had to go quarantine in India before I could see my family. I had to quarantine for a week and then get a negative test and all the rules that have been put in place. So, yeah, that was just the one off trip that I did last year, but otherwise, I haven't been able to fly.

For the benefit of our listeners, we are recording this mid May 2021. And so I know that India is in a very tough point in their journey in this pandemic. At the moment, I should have actually begun by asking, is everybody, you know, okay?

So everyone in my close family seems to be fine. Most of them got vaccinated at the right time, but I get to hear a lot of sad news every couple of days. These past few weeks. It's just been terrible what's been happening there.

It's really heartbreaking. It feels like over the last year, we've had heartbreak after heartbreak, Right. We watched Italy and Spain, we watched the US we watched Brazil and here in the uk, where I'm recording as well. I mean, we've obviously turned a corner because the vaccination program went really well. But up until that point, we were, I think, fourth leading in the world in terms of COVID deaths or a percentage of population to COVID deaths. So I really have a lot of empathy for you, and I hope we turn this corner pretty soon on a global scale, because none of Us are going to be safe until all of us are safe. This is a pandemic, doesn't respect borders. Right.

Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah.

What advice would you have for any EDEC young alumni, maybe, or alumnus alumna or indeed really anybody that might be listening to this thinking, I think I'm going to do it. I think I'm going to. I've got this great idea. I see a business opportunity, I want to make an impact. What advice would you have before they get started?

A couple of advices that I have right off my hand is build a very strong network. Use your time in EDEC to not only study during your classes, but be part of the ecosystem of edhec. Be part of the extended network of the alumni network. Right. When you're a student. So, for example, if you want some advice in an industry, let's say like recycling, you can come to our company and you can ask Peter and me for, for how to get started in this industry. If you want to start in the restaurant industry, find out. And there are so many alumni in that industry. Find out if someone has a restaurant you know in and find out what challenges they have to face. And second thing is make friends, enjoy your time in anything you do in life.

I think that is the perfect point to end on. I just want to thank you so much for joining me and I think Breadlock is such a great example of where I believe business is going, which is to completely erase the barrier or the difference between, between sustainability and business. All business needs to be sustainable. Right. And to me, there should be no difference. And I think you're proving that.

You.

Know, profitability is what you're out for. You want to be a hundred million euro company and you're going to make a difference in the world of recycling and in waste as part of that. So I thank you very much for your time today and I also thank you very much for the work that you're doing.

Thank you so much, Cassandra. Thanks to you. And thanks to Nilesh. He's been very kind as well. He's the India representative.

So for our listeners, Nilesh is our country manager for India.

Yeah. And thanks to Geraldine as well. Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much. If people want to learn more about you, if they want to learn more about Bread Lack, where should they go?

They can contact us directly. We have our contact details on the ERIC alumni website. We are both registered, Pierre and me, and they can also contact us directly via our email. Contactredlac.com and we are always there to help the edict fraternity.

Great. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day and enjoy some of this rare sunshine.

Impact around the World is an initiative of the pioneering EDHEC Delegations team and EDHEC Alumni. A huge thank you to my fellow country managers Patricia in California, CC in China, Nilesh in India, and Joyce in Singapore for making these interviews happen. We are committed to building a community beyond the classroom for you, our 46,000 alumni in over 125 different countries. Follow us on Twitter at edecalumni or visit the alumni website at alumni edech. Edu to find out more about how you can connect with the EDEC community close to you and around the world. Thanks for listening.