Neo San Launches SafeDispose Bengaluru to Tackle Sanitary and Biomedical Waste with WEF Support

BBMP Maternity Hospital, Halasuru 

• As part of an initiative by the World Economic Forum, Neo San will install their futuristic smart-bins, ‘Neo-X’, across Bengaluru over the next few months, in collaboration with the Greater Bengaluru Authority, Government of Karnataka.

Neo San, a Bengaluru-based clean-technology company that develops a range of highly efficient, on-site thermal waste-processors, has been awarded for their patented innovation by UpLink, the early-stage innovation engine of the World Economic Forum (WEF). In collaboration with the Government of Karnataka, the program aims to address the various challenges in our growing cities, and Neo San has been selected as a strategic partner to deploy its solutions across Bangalore to manage reject-waste on-site, at various facilities.

Launching soon under the name ‘SafeDispose Bengaluru', this solution will bring certified, on-site sanitary and biomedical waste-processing to government and private institutions across the city, taking away one of the most challenging aspects of waste management.

As a winner of the Yes/Bengaluru Urban Innovation Challenge, Neo San is a part of a structured collaboration between UpLink- World Economic Forum’s Centre for Urban Transformation, and strong partners like United Way Bangalore, Deloitte, Anthill Ventures, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cisco, Salesforce, SAP, the Government of Karnataka, the Greater Bengaluru Authority, with more than 15 additional organisations. The programme supports innovative urban solutions across sustainability, sanitation, and public health. Bengaluru is only the second city in the world, after San Francisco, to host this global initiative.

Neo-X Unit by Neo San

A grant provided to Neo San will fund the deployment of Neo-X units that safely treat sanitary and biomedical waste at the point of waste generation. The units will be deployed phase-wise, at various institutions; colleges, schools, primary health centres, women’s hostels, government housing and other official buildings around Bengaluru, reaching over 5,000 women. This will also dignify waste collectors on-ground, who are often left sorting through such waste with their hands.

Manyata Tech Park

Across government schools, primary health care centres, and women’s hostels, waste like sanitary pads, bandages, soiled tissues and clinical consumables, is generated daily with no certified on-site disposal route. The most common outcome is open burning, which creates serious air quality challenges for surrounding communities. Open waste burning accounts for 11% of Bengaluru's total PM2.5 emissions*, making it the city's third-largest source of particulate pollution after transport and industry. Sanitation workers handle this waste manually, without protection or protocol. Girls in government schools have no safe, dignified disposal option during menstruation. Neo San is tackling this from a gender inclusion perspective as well as an environmental one, closing a gap that sits at the intersection of public health, worker dignity and clean air.

Every Neo-X unit has real-time IoT monitoring of each cycle run and every kilo processed, thereby creating robust data for urban planning for the city. The SafeDispose Bengaluru initiative is aimed at eliminating open burning and manual waste handling at all these sites, conducting source segregation workshops, and generating India’s first field-verified compliance data under the Solid Waste Management Rules 2026 — creating a replicable template for institutional rollout across Karnataka and beyond. Karnataka State Pollution Control Board has reviewed and validated the technology for deployment across the city.

Commenting on the initiative, Dhwaj Bagrecha, Founder, Neo San, said, “Waste infrastructure has a large gap nobody talks about. The third stream - sanitary, biomedical, contaminated reject-waste - is generated daily with no certified on-site disposal route. The most common outcome is open-burning at low temperatures or dumping, since it has no economic incentive for material recovery. This creates some serious air quality challenges around our cities, polluting water bodies and soil-health without check. More so, sanitation workers handle this waste manually, causing an invisible spread of health risks for them and others. SafeDispose Bengaluru is what closing that gap actually looks like in practice. Through this initiative, our aim is the on-site treatment of this waste, in a controlled manner, eliminating open burning and reducing overall process emissions by 98%. This is the first step of a much larger deployment in India, something we’ve been building quietly for years”

With more than 200+ machines deployed across India under managed service contracts — including at organisations such as SAP India, Taj Hotels, Airtel, Royal Enfield, RMZ,, Embassy Group and others. Neo San is now expanding its presence across government and institutional infrastructures.

About Neo San Private Limited

Neo San is a Bengaluru-based clean-technology company building India's most advanced on-site waste management infrastructure. The company is focused on addressing a structural gap in India’s formal waste management system at the institutional level. While dry recyclables have collection systems and organic waste has composting infrastructure, sanitary, biomedical, and contaminated waste often has no certified processing route. As a result, such waste is frequently openly burned or dumped — releasing pollutants such as PM2.5, dioxins, and furans, handed to contractors without verified downstream processing or dumped on land, destroying land value and leaching into the water table. The Solid Waste Management Rules 2026, which came into force on April 1 this year, now mandate separate certified processing for this waste stream at every bulk waste-generating institution, though a large number of institutions remain non-compliant.

Founded in 2022, the company develops, manufactures, and operates a range of sealed, sensor-driven thermal waste processors — from the most compact model, the Neo-X for use at Bulk Waste Generators, to the Neo-XT and Neo-AX that target biomedical and industrial applications at up to one tonne of waste per day. Neo San's combustion technology sustains 1,200°C through adaptive sensor-based control, achieving emissions 98% cleaner than CPCB norms. The technology is backed by 11 global patents (certified) and supported by the Karnataka Pollution Control Board as an ultra-low pollution initiative.

The company is seed-funded, and is in talks for a Series A round, and receives support from UpLink and the World Economic Forum with the right connections to deploy, hire and grow in Bengaluru.

Website: https://neosan.in/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/neosan/

Sources: *Guttikunda, S. et al. (2019). Air quality, emissions, and source contributions analysis for the Greater Bengaluru region of India. UrbanEmissions.Info / ScienceDirect. Available at: https://urbanemissions.info/wp-content/uploads/docs/2019-01-APR-AQ-Bengaluru.pdf