A cool breeze cuts through the stale hot air in a narrow alley making vividly bright colors flutter – colors that reveal themselves as cloth fabric lined up in stalls, row upon row, and even more colors worn as clothing by the people who go about their daily activities. The gust stirs a thousand smells – a blend of unmistakable spices and tasty dishes being prepared in small kitchens.
No sooner does the first cloud of spice fragrance disappear than we’re hit with the stench of dust and wastewater. With this odor, our perception shifts. In our kaleidoscope, the mirrors break, the colorful fascination is gone. Suddenly a little boy with a huge water canister pushes his way between us as our eyes follow him. His destination: a tanker truck, where the locals are filling their buckets with drinking water. Just then, we step into a stinking, filthy stream of wastewater in the middle of the street. It dawns on us: this is India. A country filled with beauty. A country with enormous water problems.
Enormous because India's water crisis encompasses all three fundamental groundwater issues: climate change is reducing groundwater levels, the scarce resources are being over-extracted, and the remaining supply is contaminated by intensive agriculture, industrial wastewater, and inadequate waste management.
Yes, these are significant challenges. But challenges that come with great hope. This hope is evident in all the people, companies, visionaries, and ideas dedicated to investing their time in solutions to improve the situation.
One of these people is Amrit On Nayak. “It’s a personal goal of mine to ensure that as many people as possible have clean water available all of the time”, says Amrit while working towards this goal with his wastewater treatment company, IndraWater.
IndraWater’s solution is a game-changer: a groundbreaking device that purifies wastewater right at its source. This innovative system effectively removes pollutants from a variety of wastewater streams – be it domestic, commercial, municipal, or industrial. The goal? To champion water reuse and significantly cut down on the pollution of water bodies. At the heart of their approach lies advanced technology like electrocoagulation-based treatment, enabling them to clean wastewater both efficiently and economically, making a cleaner future not just possible, but practical.
“Now watching dirty water get cleaned in seconds is actually a transforming feeling, because we realised that this can have a massive impact in India”, Amrit tells us enthusiastically.
What stands out, in addition to the innovative technology, is the adaptability of the wastewater treatment machines. These machines come in various sizes and are designed for portability, enabling quick deployment to locations in need. Furthermore, they are characterised by low energy consumption and do not require added chemicals, producing minimal sludge. This makes them not only efficient but also environmentally friendly. A notable feature is their water recovery rate, which exceeds 95%, establishing a new benchmark in sustainable water management.
IndraWater has thus built a technology that provides a solution to part of India’s water problems, offering great hope and further motivating all of us.
