He quit school to clean drains. Now his waste management business makes S$3 million a year
From cleaning grease traps at 17 to running a S$3 million-a-year business, Shaik Nifael’s waste-management company Jetters Incz shows how grit can rewrite a career path.
Source: Vulcan Post Malaysia · August 26, 2026 at 9:31 PM · AI-assisted report
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SINGAPORE, 27 AUGUST 2026 —
From cleaning grease traps at 17 to running a S$3 million-a-year business, Shaik Nifael’s waste-management company Jetters Incz shows how grit can rewrite a career path.
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Shaik left school after failing his O-Level maths and combined science, dropped out of Millennia Institute in his first year, and took up his father’s ultimatum: return to class or join the family waste-management firm. “I wanted to prove myself to him,” Shaik told Vulcan Post Malaysia. The next morning he sat for an interview in his father’s office.
By 2011, aged 28, Shaik had worked his way from trainee to operations manager at a friend-of-the-family’s waste company. He helped grow the fleet from three to 17 vehicles in four years. In late 2014 a casual conversation with Kelvin Neo, owner of Ho Eng Huat Construction, turned into an offer of S$200,000 in seed capital.
Shaik walked into Kelvin’s office with a full financial breakdown—vehicles, licences, tanker fabrication—and left the same day with the cash on a handshake. Jetters Incz was registered in August 2015.
To keep costs down, Shaik furnished the first office from second-hand Carousell finds, calling it “a Frankenstein office, cut and paste, enough to get it going.” His wife Dania joined on day one, running sales while raising their children.
Jetters’ core business is clearing stubborn pipe blockages that most plumbers cannot handle. Using high-pressure water jetting and vacuum tankers, the team rotates through more than 500 outlets for Starbucks, KFC, Pizza Hut, Coffee Bean, Sushi Express, Shake Shack and others. Scheduled maintenance prevents emergencies; the roster also handles burst pipes and flooded kitchen lines at any hour. Jetters deploys crews around the clock and answers emergency hotlines 24/7.
The company runs a lean team of 12 with seven vehicles—tankers, water-jetting trucks, lorries and vans. Jetters grew during Singapore’s COVID-19 lockdown by moving foreign workers out of dormitories early, allowing it to keep operating while competitors with dorm-bound crews could not.
Jetters also became an early adopter of digital tools in an industry Shaik describes as largely untouched by new technology for decades. Instead of bidding for building-maintenance tenders, which often reward only the cheapest quote, Shaik pivoted to servicing multi-outlet chains that need consistent, standards-driven maintenance. Today it maintains drainage for all 164 Starbucks outlets and 72 KFCs in Singapore, alongside 56 Pizza Huts and more, and is adding international hospitality clients.
“When you can maintain chain outlets well, they stay with you without even doubting you,” Shaik said. “That’s the epitome of your service quality.”
Payment terms can stretch to 200 days, exposing Jetters to credit risk when large clients collapse. Shaik said outstanding invoices from US fast-food chain Fatburger and Sentosa Beach Club Tipsy Unicorn, which folded in 2023 and 2026 respectively, have yet to be recovered after years of work.
Running costs run about S$200,000 a month. Diesel for the tankers has roughly doubled or tripled in recent years because of the Middle East conflict, Shaik said. Jetters mostly absorbs the increase rather than passing it to long-term clients, valuing relationships above margin.
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