Social Ventures in Asia (1)
Piramal Sarvajal
Piramal Sarvajal
Piramal Sarvajal:
The Water Banking System that Works
Presentation of a Social Enterprise Case in Asia, Piramal Sarvajal, during <Asia Tomorrow U> ProgramInadequate Water as a Social Issue
We may have a water crisis in our hands. From an increasing population, water consumption will rise, which is exacerbated further by the worsening climate. Due to climate change, water retention is overall difficult from more draughts and sudden but uncontrollable bursts of floods. Despite the odds, most experts agree it is rather unlikely that the world will exhaust all freshwater resources. But the main crisis is the availability of potable water in the urban areas.
India: Thriving nation for Social Ventures
India is particularly interesting as a lucrative market for social ventures. By 2015, India’s population is projected to reach 1.73 billion people, exceeding China’s 1.46 billion. India’s economic growth is quickly increasing, but with its population growth, and increasing influx of people in urban cities, water management and access to clean water will be difficult.
India has an unfortunate case with inadequate clean water, with over 25 million people without access to water, and over three-quarters of the population vulnerable to untreated water resulting in 1600 dysentery related deaths daily. In addition, most women and children in rural areas waste 700 hours annually, just to collect a gallon of water. In terms of its geography, two-thirds of India does not have a perennial river flowing. Packaged water is unnecessarily expensive for rural Indians and overall, most of India depends on limited groundwater.
Piramal Sarvajal
Founded in 2008, Piramal Sarvajal is a social enterprise utilizing water ATM’s to provide clean, affordable and accessible water in both rural and urban areas. To summarize their successes in the last 10 years, over 430,000 people are served daily, there are over 668+ purification units, over 332 ATM units, and an annual generation of over $4,346,000 (USD) in terms of the local economy.
Sarvajal operates both purification units and ATM’s scattered across India and gives the responsibilities of these units to the local community. The company is based on subscription where customers pay a small fee for a re-chargeable card to use to pay at the ATM.
Systems and Operations:
Systems and Operations:
This social enterprise tries to maintain these systems at a community level, and hence operations are driven locally. They are a market-based pay per use system, instead of free distribution. It utilizes solar-powered, cloud-connected water ATMs, which are operational 24/7. With digital connections by a cloud service, water quality and consumption data of each dispense units are easily gathered. This cloud data gathering function provides further information regarding customer data (first-time users and regular users), successful and non-successful units and notification on any damaged or non-functioning machines.
In addition, most rural Indians are still not fully aware of the dangers of drinking untreated water including the high medical costs. Therefore, this venture also relies on marketing, done by its Community Awareness and Local Marketing (CALM) team, which is comprised of local men and women hired from the respective communities to not only educate the populace of the importance of clean water but collect data and information regarding the customers and their feedback.
Other water ATM’s are beginning to burgeon in India but Piramal’s competitive advantages are listed as the following, optimized water usage of control through a cloud network, flexible payment options, low operational costs, and maintenance support. In addition, this venture is beginning to take its form as a franchise with its recognizable ATM’s assuring further quality.
Moreover, it is self-sustaining as it is highly adept at calculating risks. Purification units are not freely handed out but rather they accept applications from local communities which would like to operate purification units and ATM’s. The venture must be assured that the recipient meets the following criteria: Is there a warehouse to place the purification R.O unit, is the recipient able to bear the maintenance and operating costs is there a reliable local entrepreneur with a good sales background and is able to generate costumers.
Potentials
The venture is truly a model for other social entrepreneurs. Firstly, a social venture must be self-sustaining and be weaned off from donations to actual profits. They have rallied active communities take an active part in the social change, and most importantly it seems to work. What stood out were not their incredulous engineering feats in purification but the sheer commitment to place rather expensive, cloud-connected equipment in the middle of rural areas. They have discouraged people from free but untreated ground water (or coal-boiled water) and bring the people to paying for better quality water.
The ATMs are like an oasis and have a potential as a franchise offering a recognizable and reliable water source in the middle of the slums promoting the use of purification and increasing the branding and images of purified water and water ATM’s in general,
Hopefully, once they have gained a foothold in the market, the company can expand into treating providing treated just ground water but other sources such as sewerage systems and untreated streams. Also because most farmers in India have difficulty with water management, more large-scale water purification can be considered for agricultural uses in the rural areas.
This water ATM model may also expand into developed nations which may succumb to shortages in water. As mentioned before, the problem is not shortages of fresh water, but accessibility to drinking water in over-populated areas. A simple water fountain may be insufficient in practicing sustainability and even paying for inexpensive water creates incentives to save and reduce consumption of water. In addition, using water ATM’s reduces the use of environmentally-unfriendly plastic bottled water, which is also a lesson that developed nations should consider. With digitalized and sufficient infrastructure already existing urban developed cities, setting up these cloud-reliant ATM’s would not be difficult. Furthermore, developed nations can further facilitate purchasing methods with smartphones.
References:
http://www.photius.com/rankings/world2050_rank.html
http://www.sarvajal.com/
‘I Knew We Were in Trouble.’ What It’s Like to Live Through Cape Town’s Massive Water Crisis
https://inhabitat.com/sarvajal-provides-clean-water-via-solar-powered-water-atm-franchises/
http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2017/pdfs/atms.pdf
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