DrinkPrime’s subscription carrier for IoT-powered water purifiers allows series of water first-class facts at a household stage
The family statistics may be agglomerated and tune water first-class and contamination stages at the community and block degrees
While India nevertheless doesn’t have a gadget of measuring granular water statistics, the want to have a centralised water statistics platform became highlighted in a 2018 file via Niti Aayog
While approximately 71% of the planet is packed with water, best 2.5% of it is freshwater, which can be used for consumption and software. And in this minority, less than zero.01% is floor water, even as handiest zero.Five–zero.Seventy five% is sparkling groundwater or soil moisture. And on top of this infection makes get right of entry to to safe ingesting water a huge problem — as much as 50% of India’s 1.2 Bn populace doesn’t have access to secure drinking water, in keeping with a UN document.
Even the Indian authorities’s suppose tank Niti Aayog said in its water control survey in 2019 that 70% of the usa’s surface water is contaminated. The first step to fixing any hassle is understanding the form and length of it. However, inside the absence of actual-time information about the usa’s water resources, mapping the high-quality of this lifeline has proven difficult.
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While the Central Groundwater Management Board does examine water satisfactory, it’s an annual exercising and the wide variety of samples tested last year changed into just above 28,000. At a time while fast urbanisation is riding tonnes of sewage right into a city’s water bodies, mapping it for infection shouldn’t ideally be any much less rigorous than mapping air high-quality — which has been stepped up in latest years — or rain styles.
DrinkPrime, a Bengaluru-based cleantech startup, is seeking to tackle this hassle through a statistics-driven version that blends a water cleanser subscription service along side sensors to track a household’s water enter and consumption in actual time. The startup retrofits seven-degree opposite osmosis (RO) water purifiers with sensors which can be synced with a user’s smartphone over Bluetooth. Meanwhile, the DrinkPrime app sends the consumption and different facts from the smartphone to the cloud to song the usage and water input.
How DrinkPrime Is Looking To Map India’s Water Quality With Its IoT-Powered Purifiers
Founded in March 2016 by Vijender Reddy, an ex-AMD researcher, who has enjoy building both hardware and software program from scratch, and Manas Hota, an MBA graduate who used to work within the software program sector, DrinkPrime turned into born out of the not unusual problem confronted by means of each all through their time as flatmates.
Staying inside the identical house in Bengaluru, the duo faced numerous issues in getting drinking water deliver. “Sometimes the bottle changed into grimy even as at different instances the water internal was grimy or the deliver was always erratic,” recalled Hota.
Their initial reaction turned into now not to build a water cleaner but to understand what was the reason for the trouble, which turned into being faced via all their acquaintances within the age organization of 25-35 years. After number one research they surmised that 60-sixty five% of the humans didn’t choose the preservation package that became provided by water purifier brands.
They finally realised that the way water purifiers had been being sold — in the equal way as TVs and fridges — wasn’t ideal. “We figured out that each bottled water and a income based totally method for delivering safe water to the customer had been damaged and we looked at solving why that is so,” the cofounder told Inc42.
How DrinkPrime Is Looking To Map India’s Water Quality With Its IoT-Powered Purifiers
Traditional water cleanser corporations don’t realize who their clients are. They don’t understand about water first-rate and intake. DrinkPrime no longer handiest tracks the enter satisfactory of water, however also maintains a tab on environmental and consumption parameters.
Hota brought that DrinkPrime has been capable of measure the water pleasant at an rental degree and at a community degree in Bengaluru through its network of Internet of Things (IoT) enabled purifiers. “We are measuring the tendencies. It’s not like in the future the extent of general dissolved solids is 400 and the alternative day it's miles six hundred. The high-quality of water differs in Bangalore on every week-to-week, monthly basis,” provides Padhy.
While India nonetheless doesn’t have a machine of measuring granular water information, the need to have a centralised water statistics platform become highlighted in a 2018 document by using Niti Aayog. It says that the sort of platform will not best allow better policymaking however can also be opened to innovation thru India Stack.
DrinkPrime has plans to gather facts concerning water at a granular degree that may be used to troubleshoot contamination problems at no longer only the metropolis degree but block and community tiers too. Once they collect a essential mass of statistics, they can assist are expecting plenty of important water-related problems which include the drastic trade in water pleasant as a result of converting seasons.
Any tech startup that works with the information which can track the day by day conduct of a family also desires to effectively comfortable the era in the back of it. The enterprise claims that the records that's despatched from the IoT sensors to its servers is encrypted, which can not be regarded with out the decryption key. Further, the data saved inside the IoT tool inside the purifier isn’t very sensitive because it does now not contain in my view-identifiable facts.
A person’s cellphone is hooked up to the cleaner through bluetooth or even if the handset is misplaced there won’t be any problems, stated DrinkPrime product and strategy head Rashmi Padhy. “You can take any other smartphone and join it to the purifier and you may get related once more. Nothing gets misplaced over there,” he introduced.
DrinkPrime to begin with had the concept of connecting purifiers to telephones with SIMs, but the startup realised that the kitchen in most houses was in an indoors place and SIM connectivity turned into an trouble in the ones spots. The 2d choice changed into WiFi connectivity, however the company thru the Jio 4G revolution might push broadband out of households, which has no longer quite occurred.
So the alternative for DrinkPrime was a Bluetooth connection to the smartphone for facts transfers and then ‘phoning home’ to send the encrypted information to the cloud for processing and evaluation.
How DrinkPrime Is Looking To Map India’s Water Quality With Its IoT-Powered Purifiers
The spine of DrinkPrime’s facts play rests on its ability to power adoption by households. According to Hota, the startup has seen a 10-fold growth in its subscriber base to around 25,000 over the last 12 months. This upward thrust came at the returned of a purchaser acquisition strategy of zero fee at the purifiers and subscription plans that are cheap in assessment to bottled and canned water.
“We have stored our pricing keeping the users in thoughts. They are normally humans such as you and me who are not from Bengaluru and live right here in rented flats,” said the cofounder. There are distinct subscription plans that the cleantech startup offers primarily based on the scale of a family and the amount of water fed on and the cost of water in keeping with litre works out to be INR 2 to INR 3.7.
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This is not the simplest player on this space though — startups together with Gurugram-primarily based Livpure and Bengaluru-based Oceo additionally charge on a according to litre foundation for his or her smart purifiers. However, DrinkPrime claims to have launched its product before the 2 others. While DrinkPrime’s value consistent with litre across distinctive plans works out to be among INR zero.89 and INR three.7, the corresponding range for Livpure is INR 1.2 -INR 3.2 while Oceo costs INR 1 according to litre.
Livpure has a funding of $16 Mn against its call however it’s to be referred to that the corporation is gift in the air cleanser and AC segments too, while Oceo’s investment photograph isn't clean. In comparison, DrinkPrime has been backed by a $3 Mn funding round that changed into led by Sequoia Capital and noticed participation from Omidyar Network.
Hota discovered, “This spherical changed into a pre-collection round and for the next 6-three hundred and sixty five days we would be looking at growing aggressively.”
The startup became seeking to extend to three towns inside the modern-day year but the Covid pandemic led it to halt its plans. “We are not looking at a fund-boost within the quick time horizon however somewhere in 2021 we would sincerely take a look at a Series A,” he introduced.
