Archive for Water

Waterlife India Private Limited (Waterlife) announced that it has received an investment of INR22 crores (~US$4.2m) from Matrix Partners India. Beyond Profit‘s publisher Intellecap was the sole advisor for this transaction.

Waterlife is a pioneer in providing high quality potable water solutions to the underserved in an affordable and sustainable manner. It has installed safe water systems in more than 1,500 villages and urban areas reaching more than one million people.

“This capital infusion provides Waterlife the growth capital to expand its scale in the underserved potable water space. We started our work in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, and presently work in six states to provide potable water solutions. We are now poised to emerge as the leading player in this segment across India. We are very impressed with Matrix’s deep understanding of the water sector and are very  pleased to have them as our partner,“ said Sudesh Menon, Managing Director of Waterlife India Private Limited.

Anurag Agrawal, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President of the Investment Banking division at Intellecap, had this to say: “We are delighted to partner with Waterlife as it is one of those rare business models that has successfully demonstrated that it is possible to create true triple bottom-line returns and create tangible large scale impact on the ground in rural India. We’re confident this is just the start of many paradigm shifting achievements for Sudesh and his team.”

“It is our privilege to be associated with the Promoter team of Sudesh Menon, Mohan Ranbaore & Indranil Das. We believe Water will remain a high growth sector driven by strong government focus and socio-economic relevance of water as a resource. We believe Waterlife with its innovative business model complemented by a high quality management team is set to emerge as a leader in the potable water segment,” said Avnish Bajaj, Co-Founder & Managing Director of Matrix India.

Waterlife won the prestigious Sankalp Award this year in the Health, Water and Sanitation category.

This story originally appeared in the October 2011 edition of the Searchlight South Asia newsletter created by Intellecap for the Rockefeller Foundation.

By Usha Ganesh

South Asia is home to about 20% of the world’s population. It is also home to over 60% of the world’s poor. Rapid urbanization and expanding cities are fast becoming ubiquitous in South Asian countries like India and Bangladesh.

As urban sprawl expands to engulf nearby rural areas, it is becoming increasingly difficult to draw a clear boundary between urban and rural areas. As a result, sizable peri-urban areas dot the landscape. These areas demonstrate urban as well as rural characteristics with traditional occupations giving way to more modern ones, changing lifestyles and social interactions. Most importantly, though, this “urban sprawl” is imposing severe pressure on infrastructure in these areas, particularly in terms of access to water. Peri-urban areas are a veritable no-man’s land, as they are no longer part of the rural governing bodies’ jurisdiction, and are yet to be assimilated into that of beleaguered urban governing bodies. This compounds their vulnerability to water access challenges, as no one is quite clear on who is responsible for ensuring fair water supply to the peri-urban poor. » Continue reading “Water Access in Peri-Urban South Asia”

This story originally appeared in our May 19th, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to subscribe.

It’s hard for either the government or the private sector to completely serve poor populations. Oftentimes, the best way is to team up. We look at a private-public partnership providing clean water and sewage services in Pakistan.

Water is an essential ingredient for life, but 1 billion people – or nearly 1 in 6 of the planet’s population  – do not have access to clean water. Many see it as a government imperative to provide its citizens with clean drinking water, but what happens when the government can’t meet that need alone?

In the Union Council 60 area of Lahore, Pakistan, the drinking water was contaminated with sewage causing residents to suffer from cholera, typhoid, diarrhea, dysentery and Hepatitis A. More than half of the residents were unhappy with the quality of the water, but only 5% were aware that boiling the water could improve the quality.

The Government of Punjab wasn’t able to meet the need on its own so it called upon Anjuman Samaji Behbood (ASB), an NGO working on integrated models for water and sanitation in Pakistan, to implement their participatory planning model – where communities are involved in the planning – in the area. » Continue reading “Partner for the Greater Good”

Beyond Profit spoke to Sameer Kalwani, Chief Technology Officer of Sankalp 2010 winner Sarvajal, about its technological advancements and measuring social impact.

What has being a Sankalp winner meant to Sarvajal?

Winning Sankalp 2010′s Health, Water, and Sanitation Award for an Emerging Enterprise has aided Sarvajal in two ways. Being a young organization, we wanted to make sure we were moving in the right direction. Gaining the approval of Sankalp’s experienced judging panel reaffirmed our business model. The questions the panel posed also helped us adjust our methodologies, getting us closer to a sustainable, scalable solution that encourages the spread of clean water throughout India. What made the outcome even more beneficial was the network that emerged out of winning the award. After Sankalp we were able to establish a couple of partnerships that have helped us bring our solutions to other parts of India that we were not operating in before.

» Continue reading “Why We Measure Impact”

Nilekani talked to Beyond Profit about her work in education, the next big issue in social enterprise in India and her session at the Sankalp Forum.

What do you hope comes out of your Indian impact investing sessions at Sankalp?

I hope I do a good job, of course. Certainly, I will learn much. Will it impact on creating new impact investors? Well, I hope it can deepen a debate.

In 2007, you said primary education in India was at a tipping point. Has it tipped?

Several milestones have been crossed since 2007. The RTE (Right to Education) is in place, the Ministry of HRD (Human Resource Development) has become active about the next level of education – secondary and tertiary. There is a clear governmental priority for quality of outcomes at all levels. Many nonprofit organizations and also for-profit entities remain very active. Best of all, parents are making smart choices for themselves on education for their children wherever they can. As always in India, you can do all that and there still remain formidable challenges. But I still maintain we have won the battle of ideas on primary education. Almost all children of this and future generations will complete primary school. We have to keep making sure they get their time’s worth and the joy of learning they deserve. » Continue reading “The Battle of Ideas”

This story originally appeared in our April 21, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Pre-paid mobile phone services are reaching markets that other technologies have not yet been able to penetrate. How can this model be leveraged in other areas of development?

For those at the bottom of the pyramid, income is not a certain entity. No fixed amount is deposited into their bank accounts – should those even exist – at the end of the month. Their income is changing—from month to month, week to week, even day to day.

Which begs the question: if a borrower’s cash flow is so uncertain, why do so many companies attempting to serve that demographic insist on fixed repayment amounts?

At least one technology, invented in the 1990s, attempted to work around that problem: pre-paid mobile services that allowed people with variable incomes and/or poor credit to use cell phones. Such consumers made an upfront payment of only as much as they could afford in return for wireless services. » Continue reading “Top Up the World”

Dhaka has a critical water supply problem. According to a study by the Institute of Water Modeling based in Bangladesh’s capital city, its groundwater level is falling by three meters per year. Groundwater has already receded by 50 meters in the past 40 years, bringing the current level to 60 meters below ground. The supply-demand gap is approximately 500m liters per day. The situation is so problematic that in the summer of 2010, the Government of Bangladesh deployed troops to manage water distribution in Dhaka.

Since 1963, the population of Dhaka has grown 13 times. When Bangladesh gained its independence in 1971, Dhaka faced a growing influx of rural-to-urban migration. The city expanded into the low-lying marshlands at its borders. Historically, most of Dhaka’s water supply comes from its two rivers, the Buriganga and the Shitalakkhya. But as population has increased and industry has expanded, river water has become contaminated with industrial waste. Today, groundwater is expected to satisfy over 80% of the city’s water supply. » Continue reading “Rainwater Harvesting in Dhaka”

This post is part of our ongoing partnership with GOOD Magazine. Post by Alex Goldmark.

Tuesday was World Water Day. This year’s theme was “Water for Cities.” Yes, you can still attend all manner of walks, photo contests, screenings and other events supporting global access to clean water. We’ve highlighted some noble projects for delivering drinking water in the past, but for this year’s World Water Day, we bring you news of a new technology designed especially for disasters.

The HTI HydroPack is like an empty Capri Sun pouch with powdered nutrients inside. But it’s really a filter you can drop in any water source—a swimming pool, a mud puddle, a contaminated aquifer—and eight to twelve hours later the pack has filled itself with potable, fortified water. » Continue reading “The HydroPack Is Like a Capri Sun Pouch for Disaster Relief”

Dear Reader,

The world’s water situation is dire. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1.5 billion people do not have access to clean water—that’s almost one in four people. Four million people die of water-related diseases each year. Diarrhea is the second largest cause of child mortality in the world and kills up to 1,600 people a day. As a result of unsafe water, diarrhea and upper respiratory infections kill 3.5 million children under the age of 5.

World Water Day is in less than two weeks, and this issue focuses on the challenges of providing clean water and quality healthcare to those who need it most.

WHO estimates that out-of-pocket, point-of-care expenditures account for more than 70% of healthcare spending in India. This can continue the cycle of poverty.

Read more about Arogya Parivar, a rural healthcare business catering to the bottom of the pyramid. This is one initiative aiming to solve that problem. Currently, the program reaches 50 million rural Indians with plans to expand to 350 million in the next 10 years.

As always, we want to hear from you! If you have any comments, thoughts, or feedback, leave a comment on a specific post or get in touch.

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Editorial Team » Continue reading “Toward A Healthy World”

This story originally appeared in our March 10, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to subscribe.

The team at PotaVida has created an indicator that takes the uncertainty out of solar disinfection, one of the cheapest methods to disinfect water.

How did PotaVida start?

CM: It actually started out of a design competition. Fundación SODIS, this organization that manages solar disinfection (SODIS), decided that they needed a way to train people how to do this. Long story short, we won that competition. They had essentially no resources to develop it further so we decided to form an organization to take it on ourselves.

What stage are you in now?

TBD: What were doing is designing our focus groups and our field tests and protocol so we can answer a couple of different questions. One is, “What are the challenges for people use this indicator?” And then, “What is the rate of reduction of diarrhea in children under 5?” We’re focusing on kids under 5 because lack of access to clean water is the number one cause of death for kids under 5 across the world. » Continue reading “Doing Solar Disinfection Worry Free”