One man’s rubbish is Junk Hunter’s treasure

Harsha Rathnayake is a man of impressively singular focus. For instance, when he first arrived in London from Sri Lanka in 2004 he barely spoke the language. But not only did he teach himself English by watching YouTube tutorials and taking a few online courses but he also used these skills to launch his own business. And now he’s bringing the same attitude into making his company a success. “My plan is to make Junk Hunters the UK’s largest garbage-collecting company,” he says.

And it’s safe to say that his grit has already served him in good stead. For instance, when Rathnayake needed money to afford his studies at Kingston University, he happened upon an opportunity that would help set him on the path to become an entrepreneur. “I found a part-time job as a driver at a garbage-removal company,” he says. The job didn’t just give him a dependable revenue stream but would also prove essential for his future enterprise. “When I graduated in 2009 the man who owned the company was closing it down to go back to India,” Rathnayake says. “He offered me an old Ford Transit garbage truck instead of my last month’s wages.” Realising that having the vehicle and his personal relationship with some of the customers would enable him set up his own business, Rathnayake accepted the offer and launched London Junk, the embryo of what would eventually become Junk Hunters.

But access to equipment and a nascent customer base aren’t enough to get a startup off the launchpad; you also need money. Unfortunately, Rathnayake only had £160 in savings when he kicked off his enterprise. To make things even more challenging, no investors were willing to bet on the young entrepreneur. “The banks wouldn’t give me a loan because I didn’t have enough financial security,” he says. But rather than abandoning his pursuit, Rathnayake found two part-time jobs that fit around his daily efforts to grow London Junk – one delivering newspapers in the mornings and one as a takeaway driver at an Indian restaurant in the evenings. “On average I had about four hours’ sleep,” he says. “I didn’t have time to watch the news and only knew if it was the weekend because the newspapers I delivered came with weekend magazines.”

Nevertheless, the insane working schedule didn’t stop him from growing his customer base. And fortunately he had a few tricks up his sleeve. “I found this online company that sold business numbers for £10 a month,” Rathnayake says. “I bought a number from them because I wanted people to think that I ran a big business and wasn’t just some lonely guy driving around answering on his Bluetooth.” Having also set up a website, he used a £75 voucher from Google to buy a pay-per-click campaign. And when he wasn’t busy delivering newspapers and chicken tikka masala or picking up rubbish, he spent days handing out leaflets. Slowly but steadily, these efforts paid off. “After one year I had enough money to employ someone as a part-time driver and to buy a second truck,” he says. “This enabled me to quit my newspaper-delivery job and then, three weeks later, my takeaway job as well.”