'There is still opportunity in South Africa'
- Wits Alumni Relations
Witsie entrepreneur acknowledged in Forbes Africa 30 Under 30 list for innovative way of improving soil quality.
Founder and CEO of The Compost Kitchen Himkaar Singh (BSc Eng 2014, GDE 2017) is one of two Witsies who made it on to the coveted Forbes Africa 30 under 30 class list of 2022.
Singh was acknowledged for his commitment to enhance water security through his innovative way of improving soil quality through composting.
The list, in its eighth edition, celebrates and features the best and brightest on the African continent across the business, technology, sports, health and creative sectors.
“Having been chosen for this acknowledgement, out of thousands of candidates across Africa, it indicates that there is still opportunity in South Africa,” Singh said when asked about what the recognition meant. “There is still innovation, some businesses are still growing and navigating the challenges.”
The Compost Kitchen initially started as a collection and recycling business that converted recycled food waste into vermicompost, using thousands of earthworms. Customers were given the vermicompost back each month, which they could use in their vegetable garden to grow food again.
The business has matured into using a technological innovation called iCompost which is a low-noise machine with a two-litre capacity that turns all types of food waste – including coffee grounds, tea bags and eggshells – into a dry, natural and nutrient-rich modified soil.
The 30-year-old Wits-trained civil engineer and entrepreneur shared that his social awareness had been germinating over several years.
“My earliest memory of a desire to contribute to society is when I was in primary school and we were taken to Rand Water on an excursion. There, we learnt the importance of water and that we need to save water to prevent shortages in the future. Since then, I’ve always cared about water,” he said.
“Then in 2017, there was a severe drought in South Africa, and I thought back to that lesson – that we had known this could occur 20 years in advance, but it still happened. I was already a civil engineer which has a large role in the provision of water in a settlement, and I had studied a postgraduate degree focusing on water, so I knew we were doing a lot as a country, but we still didn’t mitigate the impacts of a problem we knew about so far in advance. I thought ‘If we don’t solve this, next time could be worse’.”
Singh left South Africa to study a master’s in integrated water resource management at TH Köln in Germany, and returned with a solution which he has been implementing through his company.
Singh said that every day was filled with a list of a variety of tasks. “Some are high level strategy thinking, some are about tax, some are about delivery addresses. This constant oscillation from high level tasks to on-the-ground tasks requires intense endurance.
“I spend a lot of my day not working – but rather doing things that increase my effectiveness when I do work, such as meditating, reading, researching, cooking, exercising, yoga etc. That way, when I tackle a task, I complete it quickly and accurately and can go to the next task feeling satisfied that I’ve ticked something off the list,” he said.
It’s a recipe that has served Singh well, as his work at the company has been recognised as one of the 300 World Best Practices on Sustainability and Innovation by the United Nations in February 2021 as well as having been selected as part of the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship in South Africa’s Food Waste Innovation Challenge.