Today, Sarvajal's water ATMs serve clean drinking water at a highly affordable price (about 50 paise per litre) to rural households. Installed in over 150 locations across four Indian States, Sarvajal serves as an example of low-cost innovation.
Run by a multi-stakeholder partnership involving micro-entrepreneurs, Sarvajal is also creating business and job opportunities for hundreds people.
Paresh had earlier served as the Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of HDFC Standard Life, an insurance company, before joining Piramal Foundation. Paresh brings with him a rich experience of 30 years with major strengths in strategy formulation, project management, time bound execution and building robust and customer-friendly servicing models.
Excerpts from his interview:
Sarvajal was originally conceived as a solution to address water-borne diseases in Indian villages. Can you tell us the difference the project has made in the health profile of local communities it serves?
Sarvajal currently works in four states, namely Rajasthan, Gujarat, Uthra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. However, its presence is most widespread in Rajasthan and Gujarat. In both these states, the most prevalent water-related health issues are fluorosis (both skeletal and dental), joint pain and kidney stones. Of course, other diseases caused due to bacterial contamination such as diarrhea, typhoid and malaria are also prevalent but not more alarmingly than any other part of the country.
In a study funded by HEC Business School (Paris), it was observed that consumers of Sarvajal had significantly lowered occurrences of kidney stones, joint pain, fluorosis and diarrhea. These diseases caused workers and students to miss a significant amount of work time owing to sicknesses. Interestingly, Sarvajal’s consumers missed half as many work days as non-consumers. Children consuming Sarvajal missed only one school day compared to the 3 days other children missed. A Sarvajal family visited the doctor 0.7 times a month versus 1.2 times by families not using Sarvajal. These families also saved Rs 2300 more annually otherwise in health costs.
Right from the beginning, we were clear on few things: we should not depend on any government grants, the solution should be affordable - it should not demand an upfront capital investment from end users, and the entire model should be market-based, and self sustainable.
There are many factors involved that make Sarvajal to deliver pure water at this affordable price.
Our machines are designed with components that are more suited to the local/rural realities in terms of infrastructure or availability of power. For instance, the filtration equipment uses single phase pumps. We have standardized the machine design so that we can save cost in manufacturing and maintenance. The modularization of design of filtration equipment and water ATMs has also helped us retain flexibility to adapt to local conditions.
We take automated, precautionary maintenance steps so that human errors do not lead to expensive parts replacements. We train ITI students from within the community to maintain our filtration systems and water ATMs.
We install Sarvajal units in clusters - we try to have about 25 to 30 installations within a region - to bring in increased operational efficiency. We don't have to staff our water ATMs. And our ATMs use solar power, and hence there is no recurring electricity expenses.
We are also technology driven. We have developed a cloud-based data monitoring system that can give us real time data on the performance of each and every installation.
Since, there is no exchange of cash involved at the consumer end, there is no way people can overprice the water. Customers can buy and topup their water ATM cards in local shops, just like how they do to avail mobile phone service.
There is a tremendous cost saving for consumers as well. Most of our customers are in the unorganized sector, depending on manual work. They do not have to wait in queue to get water from tankers, when they were supposed to be working. They can collect drinking water from our ATMs whenever they have time - even late at night, after they come home from work.
How many litres of pure water are distributed in a day? How many households are getting benefited?
Each water ATM can take care of the requirements of upto 500 families everyday. We serve around 1,00,000 people every day.
We have 153 franchise who run water outlets on the ground. We have provided our machines free of cost. The micro-franchise takes care of water source, and allocates a room for the filtration unit. They also incur recurring expenses as they may hire an operator for filtration and a person to deliver water to ATMs. It usually takes 18 to 24 months for a Sarvajal micro-enterprise to break even.
From our end, we provide filtration equipment and water ATM for free. But, we enter into a revenue sharing agreement with our franchises. About 20% of their revenue comes to us for offering maintenance services. This way, there is a vested interest for us to keep the model up and running. We take full responsibility of machine maintenance - the franchises do not have to worry about unforeseen maintenance expenses.
We don't charge end customers for the first month. This allows villagers to try private water and see the benefits. Such launch marketing efforts guarantees a minimum customer base for franchises on the very first day itself. We have had cases in the system where the franchisee has come from a disadvantaged background, with no permanent source of daily income, but is now making Rs 10,000 a month regularly!
Our end consumers and franchisees are our key stakeholders. From a regulatory perspective, we have already partnered and continue to do so with the relevant government agencies, especially the health departments .
We are actively collaborating with academia and experts/organizations specializing in membrane technology. We are looking for partnerships for new designs of our ATMs - instead of floor mounted ATMs, we could think of other designs like wall-mounted ones, for instance. We are also looking for collaborations, especially with chemical industries, in cleaning the ATM without manual intervention.
What are the key learning from the project? What is the scope for replicating the success in other parts of the country by your organization or others?
We have demonstrated that a community level drinking water business model with last mile connectivity can stand on its own two legs without any government support. Using remote sensing technology, and real time data in terms of water source, quality, production, provisioning and selling price, we have introduced a great level of transparency and accountability in this sector. These are some of the key differentiators of Sarvajal.
With the entire range of our product offerings and our collective experiences in the past four years, we can truly claim that we have all systems in place to be able to reach the last mile. We are open to sharing our technology as well as our model with other like-minded organizations nationally and internationally.
Though Sarvajal is designed primarily for rural areas, there is no reason why it can't be installed in cities. Already, AIMS, Delhi has installed our water ATMs in its outpatient wing so that visitors can pay and use pure drinking water. The Delhi Municipality is keen to have our solution installed in large slums and in government schools as well.