More than half of those in India lack access to clean water, and fluoride affects more than 10 million Indians. Remote areas often lack access to clean drinking water and people walk miles to get it.
Drinking water for rural areas comes from groundwater, which is now at an accelerating rate leading to wells drying up.
“Swapnil Shrivastav, co-founder of a clean-tech start-up, recalls a time when there was a severe drought. During this time, they were only allowed to have one bucket per day in college.”
He wanted to solve this problem with his college friend Venkatesh R.
With their company, Uravu Labs, Shrivastav and Venkatesh created the machine to produce sustainable drinking water from air.
A start-up that creates ‘green’ water out of thin air with no carbon footprint
The concept of water from air is not new. The conventional way uses a significant amount of electric to do so and often isn’t generated from clean sources.
Each liter of water that the conventional technology produces consumes nearly four units of electricity, which can cost around 10 rupees. Shrivastav shared this insight with the reporter.
The founders of not-for-profit company Hydrate had a solution to water poor communities. With their product, the water supply is sustained and the price tag is comparable to that of mineral water.
We were inspired to create Uravu because of the vapor emissions that come from air.
There was either unsafe drinking water or water was scarce. Shrivastav personally traveled to these places and said there would be miles in between the villages when it came to finding water.
A start up sells renewable air water at ₹4 per liter
Their machine can extract water from the air, providing you with 20-100 litres per day. This is priced comparably to mineral water.
If the extracts rise to 100-200 litres per day, then the cost is around ₹4.
The cost for a liter of drinking water will be ₹2-2.5 when the production increases due to the industrial scale and when it goes beyond 2000 liters.
Beverage industry uses 20% drinkable water annually for making their products
Uravu is a startup targeting the Indian beverage market.
Shrivastav made a point to say how much water and electricity it takes to make products like beer and iced drinks. While most of the drink made up with 90% of the water.
Coca-Cola consumes 10 lakh liters of water per day
The drink industry can withdraw up to 1,500 million liters of water on an annual basis. More than half of this is coming from groundwater which takes around a thousand years to replenish.
On the other hand, water is replenished naturally just in eight to 10 days by the earth’s hydrological cycle.
Uravu is helping brands to switch from pulling water for their products from groundwater, and instead use air. This start-up creates ‘green’ water out of thin air.
Uravu expands its reach beyond the country
Uravu targets cities and is now getting into real estate, particularly in a variety of locations from villas to parks to schools and hospitals.
The goal for the Copymatic production line is to produce 100 liters of COB polymer in a single day. These figures are planned to be scaled up in time with more production units available from the company.
Currently, Uravu Labs is planning to expand their product line in Japan, the Middle East, Africa, and the United States. For now, they are a home-grown start-up that offers outstanding customer service with a global reach.
Also read: How this Youtube channel becomes a billion dollar company – India’s first profitable unicorn startup
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