anusridharan

haha kind of, with a slight automation twist. We use IoT devices so we automatically detect when your water is low and order it for you :) We've realized that for people who have to order water often, it's kind of a pain to do it manually every time. That's the IoT version of it.

Most definitely- we will also be diligent, and we'd love feedback and thoughts as we progress!

Yes- we actually started out going down the road of conservation via smart metering devices. We quickly realized that we would be facing an uphill battle if we kept trying to start there.

Also, as a point of clarification, no city in India receives 24x7 water (except Jamshedpur), although many cities have pilot projects (Nagpur is the closest to Mumbai). The Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) is probably the furthest ahead as far as public water utilities go, and many people think they have 24x7 water, but they just have a very reliable, but intermittent, source of water. The BMC has done a very good job of trying to reduce inconvenience to residents.

We actually think that, ironically, as water gets more expensive for the higher income groups, they will then start turning to water conservation mechanisms. That's the pull we are seeing in Bangalore, and what we think will be the pull in the future. Lower income communities already do a pretty good job of conserving water since they tend to pay a higher price. It's amazing what market forces do for water conservation.

We are also encouraging communities to introduce slab billing and try to do individual apartment metering. By raising water prices for the highest users, people are becoming more price sensitive and trying to use less.

That's a really good question with a not so straightforward answer. I'll start with some stats. Public water utilities lose 50% of it's water due to leakages. During monsoons, India gets enough rain to fulfill it's drinking water needs (but as you can imagine, it's hard to store that water for the year). As energy gets cheaper and cheaper, technologies like desalination will get more affordable, and pumping water will be very cheap. (Just as a reference, California currently spends 3% of it's energy on pumping water!)

Overall, with the confluence of technological interventions, we think that India (and the world for that matter) has enough water- and can harness it. But right now, we see a lack of water data in the ecosystem, and we're using IoT devices to start tracking water in different forms. We believe that humanity can solve it's own problems, but it needs the data to do it. That's what we're starting to do in the private water sector, first by tracking demand, and withdrawals, and next with using data to model aquifer health. That's how we want to contribute to making sure all 9B people on this planet get clean water- make sure humanity the data to make the right decisions.

Thank you so much- we really appreciate it!

That's a good question. Actually, we've spent time figuring out how to drop the cost of the device to sub $30, at scale.

For frequent users, we would give the device away for free. For people that are on a public water connection and only use tankers once in a while to supplement their water usage, it would probably be like you mentioned- order tankers on demand, when you need it.

Yes- the original company NextDrop has been around since 2011, but we shut that down about a year ago and started this new version of NextDrop recently.

At a high level, you're correct. For the past 6 years we were essentially selling water data to consumers, governments, and global brands. It was actually a profitable business but we decided to shut it down, not because we didn't have enough demand for water data, but because we were crowdsourcing water data and that was not very scalable or reliable. Back in 2011 IoT devices were way too expensive. When my co-founder and I noticed that devices were pretty cheap, we decided to start a company around water data again.

YC was great about us spending time in India- we split our time between India and the US because all our users were in India and they knew that. Honestly, to go after a big opportunity, sometimes it helps to be on the ground, and then step away and get advice/feedback from people who will listen to what you're saying and help you see the best way forward. That was how we used the time in the Bay Area, and found it very valuable. It was also useful for us because we were still in the launching stages. Had we been further along in the business, it may have been much harder to do what we did.

The water mafia question is definitely a super important. The only way we can see taking on the mafia is to add more water supply on to the market. The only way we can do that is to enable micro entrepreneurs to sell water. As you probably know, about 50% of urban Indians have their own borewell, but less than 1% sell water. Phase I is to aggregate water demand using our IoT devices, and Phase II is to enable hyperlocal selling of water.

That's a great question. Right now we manually take water samples and get it tested in a lab. Over time, as IoT devices get cheaper, we believe the water quality testing will be done at the source, online, and in real time. This makes it much harder to game the system.

Additionally, we track the GPS location of the truck with the water to make sure clean water is filled up at the source and the same water is delivered to the consumers.

Yup, that's something we have to monitor carefully. That's why the backbone to our business is actually IoT devices that transmit data to monitor different aspects of water. We're starting with data around water withdrawals, and moving to using devices to monitor groundwater levels. We think we can collect enough data from our devices to model groundwater aquifer health, something that very few people are doing due to lack of data and overall costs. Once we can monitor aquifer health, we can make sure that we are not overdrawing, and recharging effectively.

Thank you! And yes, we've definitely thought about this market segment as well. We are actually of the opinion that water can delivery will eventually die out. If you do the math, it's actually more cost effective to buy a water filter for drinking water. Water filtration technology is getting cheaper, more people are buying in home filters, and we're trying to get them the cleanest water possible to their homes.

That's a really great point, and bottled water is actually the fastest growing segment of private water in India (growing 30% year over year). My co founder and I have been living in India for the past 6 years and we both own personal home water filters and carry around a reusable water bottle. We are fans of companies like Unilever who are trying to produce low cost water filters for emerging markets. We think that if we can get the cleanest, cheapest water to people, and by eventually partnering with water filter companies, we can tackle the bottled water problem.

Thank you! My co-founder and I quit our jobs and moved to India 6 years ago, and we've been working in the urban Indian water space since then. We really felt that something needed to be done and we've been on a journey to figure out exactly how we can change the status quo. We appreciate all your support- it means so much!

I have a background in environmental engineering actually- I did my bachelors and masters in Civil Engineering from UC Berkeley. In undergrad I focused on environmental engineering, and for my masters I focused on sensor technology and how it's changing our built world. It's been a wild ride.

Oh man, we're hoping to get there as soon as possible!

This is true- and I'll rephrase what you're saying. What are the environmental impacts of groundwater withdrawals? If someone is withdrawing, who else isn't getting water? These are exceedingly tricky issues, and the sad part is that right now, nobody knows the answer because there is no data to answer these important questions. The first step, which we are implementing from day 1, is to use IoT devices to monitor groundwater withrdawals from our sources. The next critical piece on our product roadmap is creating IoT devices to monitor groundwater levels and using algorithms to estimate groundwater aquifer health. Given that we will be aggregating demand and understand withdrawals, this second piece will be able to estimate our natural resource health in a city for the first time. This technology advancement is critical for not just India, but the world. Once we know which aquifers are depleting the fastest we can try to recharge and use a different aquifers. This is the only way we think the world can start managing groundwater and ensure everyone has enough clean water to drink.

That's a really good point. We've had to think long and hard about this one too. There's one interesting stat that is less known. Aboout 80% of India runs on groundwater, and in cities, we have estimated that about 50% of the people have their own private water source. BUT- less than 1% sell that water. Now imagine we've used devices to aggregate all demand (phase I). Phase II would be to introduce new supply into the market. Enabling anyone with a borewell to sell water to anyone else. The biggest cost of private water right now is diesel transportation costs. When we implement Phase II, we want to enable more micro entrepreneurs to sell water hyper locally, driving down water costs. We'll have to do this carefully, but that's the only way we see not becoming the mafia and doing our part to make clean water more and more accessible to people.

Hey- that's a great point, and I'm glad you brought it up. Our previous company actually sold water data to governments so we've been working quite closely with city municipal corporations. The problem is that urbanization is happening much faster than cities can keep up. Stats put it at 200M people added to cities in the next 10 years. What city municipalities are doing is actually hiring private companies to service the extra demand. It's still part of "the government" but India is trending towards more public-private partnerships. We actually WANT the government to start to sell water on this marketplace. We would have already laid down the IoT data collection infrastructure to help them keep their loss rates low and ensure the right people get good quality water (which is one of the biggest problems they have today). We see this as the next eventual step for governments not just in India, but in many emerging markets.