Water, the elixir of life, has become one of the biggest crisis points in the world today.
The report, in fact, goes on to say that India is the worst country in the world when it comes to the number of rural people without access to safe water.
And trying to bring this much-needed change are some entrepreneurs in the country who, with their respective ventures, are making clean drinking water a reality for people like Kumar.
Their tool: water ATMs, which dispense clean drinking water at prices as low as `2-`5 a litre.
From one water ATM in New Delhi in 2013 to over 300 installed across four cities—Ghaziabad, Mumbai, New Delhi and Surat—today, they have come a long way.
Running on solar electricity, these hybrid water ATMs have an in-built water purification system that purifies the water coming in from the source.
Then there is Swajal, a Gurugram-based water ATM firm, which started in 2012.
“In our early days, we approached the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation with our concept of providing safe water through ATMs,” says Vikram Budhiraja, CEO, Pi-lo.
The firm is now in talks with the Union government’s Department of Production Engineering, which does the quality check for new technologies developed by companies, to raise an additional Rs 100 crore for its future plans.
We have already started utilising the funds to set up more ATMs across the country.