For those of you who haven’t read my
initial bio, part of the reason I’m here in India is to continue work for a
startup business that I co-founded with four classmates from UMN. We created a
business plan over the course of a semester for a class in the Grand Challenge
Curriculum called Global Venture Design. As you may imagine, we were presented
with the task to create a business idea that would create an impact and work
towards “solving” one of the grand challenges in the context of a developing
country. My group was assigned a country and one challenge: India and water.
Fairly broad, right? Right. But, it was a good starting point.
From there we spent multiple weeks thinking of the various
challenges that Indians face when it comes to water regarding either quality or
quantity, such as access and affordability. Following the design thinking
process which included several rounds of feedback from our advisors/mentors, we
eventually finalized (at least for the class) a business plan – our company,
Monsūn, would offer lease-to-own rainwater harvesting systems for residents of
Bangalore, India.
Over the following winter and spring semesters, we further
developed our plan based on more research and feedback from both our MN- and
Bangalore-based advisors. In the spring, we were awarded a grant from the Acara
Challenge to continue work and begin prototyping/implementing our solution over
the coming months. Since I was going to be in India for my program anyways, it
made sense for me to continue work on our startup while I’m here.
When I left the States for Bangalore, our initial plan-in-a-nutshell was to work with homeowners and contractors to install rainwater
harvesting (RWH) systems by entering into multi-year contracts. Monsūn would
pay the contractors and other necessary parties while the homeowner would pay
us a monthly fee (set to be comparable to prices of other water sources) over
the duration of the contract for the system and regular maintenance. At the end
of the contract term, the homeowner would own the RWH system outright and would
no longer pay the monthly fee unless they purchased a continued maintenance contract
from us.
As I’m sure many of you know, things don’t always go
according to plan. Over the last few months here, we have gained new insights
into the problems people face here and the intricacies of the RWH regulations
in the city. Additionally, a few interviews suggested that funding RWH projects
may not be as big of a problem as we had initially thought it was for our
target audience. That doesn’t mean, however, that it isn’t an issue for others –
a fact which has been mentioned several times by those who still see potential
in our plan. At this point though, entering into one of these contracts would
require a multi-year commitment in India from at least one of us, our partners, and
registration with the Reserve Bank of India in order to deal with monetary
transactions. This presents two complications: 1) with the pace of things,
getting registered as a business here with the RBI may not be completed by the
time I have to leave so we couldn’t legally do anything, and 2) we at Monsūn
are at a point in our lives where we cannot truly commit to a long-term
contract that requires us to be in India right now.
While we are not completely abandoning our original plan, we
are going to use my remaining time in India to our advantage and gain some
field experience. My home base, Cuckoo Hostel, is interested in installing a
RWH system here to reduce our dependence on tankers for water. As of now, we
get some water from the city supply (Kaveri River water) and about 10-11
tankers of water each month. On top of a monthly city supply fee of about 8000
Indian Rupees (INR), each tanker costs approximately 600 INR for roughly 6000
litres of water, for a total cost of about 14000 INR (the bill this month was
quite less, so we’ll see whether or not that continues to be the case).
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| Slightly old photo of home base! As promised, PC to Dawood. |
The rooftop is theoretically capable of harvesting up to 80-85
kilolitres of rainwater each year, which is the equivalent of 14 tankers or a
savings of about 8500 INR each year. While it might not seem like much, that
financial savings will add up over time while also reducing our dependence on
both tankers and unsustainable sources of water. As of now, the plan involves
redirecting our down-take pipes through a filter and towards some 3-5
kilolitres of storage next to the building. From there, the filtered water
would be directed to the sump using a hose and then pumped to our overhead
tanks on the roof where it will be available for use at the hostel (for
everything except for drinking). As I said, this is just a rough estimate of
numbers and an initial plan which is almost certainly going to change after I
talk to more people and contact a few contractors.
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| RWH Model by KSCST in Bangalore |
I’ll keep you posted on the
progress, but until then… feel free to share your thoughts or experiences if
any of you have done RWH!
