Husband and wife duo, Yashwant Suthar and Neelam Singh, had a simple idea to solve a big issue in India: public toilets. It’s often difficult to find a safe, sanitary public restroom in India’s bustling cities, a problem women and people with disabilities in particular face regularly. That’s why Yashwant and Neelam founded Lootel, a chain of smart restroom cafés that provides restroom services to the public, while creating dignified and well-paying work for its jobholders.

Each of Lootel’s restroom/café outlets in Indore employs six to nine jobholders, the majority of whom represent the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid. Yashwant and Neelam hope to expand their footprint, creating dignified job opportunities to lift hundreds of people out of poverty.

Yashwant and Neelam are currently participanting in Upaya’s Accelerator Program, as part of the virtual 2020 cohort. The program is aimed at equipping early-stage entrepreneurs with the tools needed to grow their companies and have a meaningful impact through job creation.

Q: What are the key problems your company aims to address?

“Public toilet quality and hygiene are one the biggest problems in India. We have enough infrastructure for it, but most of them are dirty and abandoned due to the unavailability of the perfect eco-system of maintenance and cleaning management. A dirty toilet is equal to no toilet. This is especially a nightmare for women and also people with disabilities. Whatever public restrooms are available are not safe, and they don't have proper restroom accessories. Housekeeping staff are not paid well or trained for their work, and there is an unavailability of cleaning manpower, development, and training.”

Q: How did you become so passionate about this problem?

“Most women constantly faced these problems, so we started to work on the public toilet. We found that even the people working to solve this problem are still not able to provide clean and hygienic toilet services to users. That surprised us and made us passionate about this problem.”

Q: What inspired you to start your company?

“Once my wife and Co-Founder of Lootel, Neelam Singh, was traveling by bus. The bus stopped around midnight, and she needed to use to the restroom in the public area. But it was completely messy, stinking, and full of sewage water. So she decided to go down the dark street, as women often have to do in this situation, but a drunk man started to follow her. Thankfully, I noticed that man following her, and I ran towards them just as he was about to reach her. I shouted at him, and he ran away down the dark street. By God’s grace it was just a near miss, but it could be worse. She was very shocked and emotionally disturbed.

That’s when we started to think about this public restroom problem and started to research it. We have listed all possible problems and concerns of the public restroom, and we found that this a really serious safety and hygiene problem for women. So we have created a complete business project on this problem. We started to meet with investors, but no one was ready to invest in the project due in its idea stage. We have started to collect feedback from investors and improve our business idea.”

Q: What did it take to get your company off the ground?

“I decided to leave my former job and completely focus on this project. I have invested completely in the project by loans and borrowed money from friends and family.

We have presented this idea to Indore municipal corporation, Madhya Pradesh (India). They liked our idea and gave us demo space for six Months. Now they have approved our project and gave us another space for the second unit. Currently, we are running four units: at the bus stand, the temple, the airport, and at Indore’s high foot traffic area of the ladies' shopping market.”

Q: What has been your greatest accomplishment to date?

“We are completely bootstrapped, and so far, we have served a clean washroom to 278K+ happy faces. Each Lootel outlet gives jobs to six to nine people and we currently have four outlets that have provided jobs for 38 people. Almost 80% of our staff come from the bottom of the pyramid.”

What has been your experience in working with the jobholders and their community?

“We have been working with 38 people so far. We have experienced that, for many of them, their financial growth is very low, and they are not trained to perform their work efficiently. If we provide a dignified job and environment, we hope they will work with us for a longer period of time and feel safe with us. They are ready to learn and adopt to change for their betterment in life.”

Q: What is your vision for your company? What is your vision for India or the world at large?

“We want to become India’s first brand of always clean and premium quality public restroom service provider chain. Our mission is to become the “Take a break” destination for tourists and floating people of the city. Where we will provide a clean and premium quality public restroom.”