Water for all

They wanted to fix responsibility of maintaining the flow of safe drinking water, using a custom-made approach.

The great solution : The only way to provide safe drinking water to those in need is through water ATMs, not piped water. The pipeline network might take many years to complete. Happiness to us is when elders bless their young team after using the water ATMs or when people say buying safe water at Rs 5 is better than getting free but unsafe water. With a vast experience in water management, Parag was looking for a larger project that would also make a deep impact on society. One area of particular importance, he felt, was the huge gap in the demand and supply of safe drinking water. During his frequent travels between Pune and Mumbai, he used to see beggars asking for water besides money. “For them, water was more important than Rs 2 or Rs 5 we gave them. That established the need for safe drinking water,” he says. He realised safe drinking water could be a social service as well as a good business. Together with younger brother Anurag, he launched Janajal, a water supply company, in 2013. So far, the company has dispensed around 125 million litres of safe drinking water. They have set up around 400 water dispensing machines, popularly called ‘water ATMs’, which will be augmented by another thousand next year. They say the challenge in safe drinking water is maintaining sustainability. For instance, water treatment plants are installed by many organisations or under the corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of various companies, but these are not maintained professionally. Janajal ensures that all filters, membranes and other parts of their water treatment plants are replaced from time to time to maintain quality of drinking water. There were people willing to invest capital but no one was willing to bear the cost on ongoing maintenance. Therefore, the brothers developed the water ATM concept. They say consumers are very happy to pay a nominal cost for the water as long as it is affordable. They have national-level tie-up with pathology chain Thyrocare, which has a water treatment laboratory. All of Janajal’s tests are done there following norms laid down for safe drinking water. They also have a real-time monitoring system to ensure the quality of all their devices, and their patented micro controllers.  —Kiran D. Tar