Founder of the month: zebrafant.ai
14.08.2025
Aline Kinzie
Founder of the month
An elephant with zebra stripes? It could soon be the symbol for simple and efficient waste collection. Zebrafant.ai is bringing the future of recycling forward. With their Smart Waste Collection System, they are redesigning an industry that seems to have reached a dead end: glass recycling is being digitized, reducing the workload for drivers and dispatchers.
zebrafant.ai on air with KIT-Gründerschmiede
The founders of zebrafant.ai, Peter Jung and Philipp Kiesling, came up with their business idea at a hackathon at KIT. With their Smart Waste Collection System, they are redesigning an industry that seems to have reached a dead end.
We spoke to them about what they have learned and their idea – you can find the entire conversation with even more insights on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It’s worth a listen!
What does your company stand for?
zebrafant is a software startup from KIT. We stand for the modernization of logistics processes in waste collection. With our first product, the Smart Waste Collection System, we are digitizing glass recycling collection, thereby reducing the workload for drivers and dispatchers. This not only makes glass recycling collection digital and highly efficient for waste disposal companies, but also child’s play.
Where and how did you come up with the idea to start the company?
The trigger was a hackathon in cooperation with KIT, where we evaluated fill level data from glass recycling containers. It quickly became clear that existing solutions were neither comprehensive nor economically viable. So we decided to tackle the problem at its root.
How did the founding team come together?
Philipp and I have known each other since our first week of our bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering at KIT. Later, we studied business informatics together in our master’s program. While Philipp worked in tech startups, I was involved in business development and IT consulting. This means we have complementary profiles and can still discuss topics from both areas very well.
What is your big vision?
We want to make waste collection processes so efficient that the industry can master demographic challenges without supply and disposal bottlenecks. Our goal is to establish digital and robust collection as the new standard – starting with glass recycling and expanding to other processes.
Where do you see significant hurdles in the startup process?
A major hurdle is the bureaucracy and the sheer volume of tasks at the beginning. Added to this is the learning curve as a startup team with no previous startup experience, because you only learn a lot as you go along. Structure, prioritization, and good sparring partners have helped us a lot here.
Where did you get support?
We received support from KIT, in particular from Prof. Neumann and the Chair of Autonomous Learning Robots, as well as from Prof. Lindstädt from IBU. We were also supported by the state of Rheinland-Pfalz, UnternehmerTUM and TUM Venture Labs. In addition, we completed the AI Founders programs offered by Campus Founders and XPRENEURS.
What were the biggest challenges during your startup phase?
One particular challenge was focusing on the right problems at the right time. This included saying “no” when necessary, quickly testing hypotheses, and then prioritizing consistently.
Has anything changed for you since you formally established the company?
Yes, significantly. We now have personnel responsibility, have grown and our everyday work looks very different today than it did two years ago. We have more customer contact, more operational issues, and more management tasks.
How did you solve the problem of (follow-up) financing?
After the EXIST startup scholarship, we financed ourselves through sales and various public subsidies. This allows us to continue growing in a product- and customer-oriented manner.
What are your next major milestones in the coming 12 months?
We plan to expand our Smart Waste Collection System and roll it out across Europe. At the same time, we are launching a second product together with our development partners.
In your opinion, what qualities should founders have?
You need resilience to get through difficult phases and creativity to be able to compete with large competitors using unconventional approaches.
Do you have any practical tips for other young founders?
Just get started and learn as quickly as possible. If you fall down, get up again, keep learning, and keep going.
Looking back, what would you do differently?
We would do many small things differently and take better shortcuts in some areas, but we wouldn’t change any fundamental decisions. Perhaps we would start PR work earlier.
