D.

Techno-economic/ market feasibility studies/ reports

Technical feasibility

Micro-channel evaporator for water generation purpose is not

a mature technology but progress is being made in this field.
Micro-channels are compact, more efficient and cheaper to maintain
than standard tube-fin type coil. Being made from aluminium they
can also use ammonia as refrigerant which is environmentally
friendly and has zero global impact. Copper tubings are reactive
to ammonia. In the longer run aluminium tubings with ammonia as
refrigerant will dominate the scene.

Pre-cooling is a proven technology and vastly improves the

amount of water produced. Very practical and feasible.

To make this product vastly superior to the current products

available a state-of-the-art solution needs to be found.

IoT solutions available have been proven and tested in field

and even upcoming technologies like LoRaWAN have a mature base
worldwide.

Socio-Economic feasibility

Is solving the problem worthwhile and will this technology be

viable for the purpose?
Water crisis is a huge problem. About 800 million people lack
access to it and by 2025 about 3.5 billion people will face water-
stress. By application of this technology we are increasing the
potable water stock and thus water security. And water being the
most basic requirement for life affects many other domains like
agriculture, education, sanitation, housing, manufacturing etc.

The water produced from this is of high-quality and doesnt

rely on traditional pipeline network. It is a completely
decentralized solution and needs less infrastructure investment.

Market feasibility

We looked across various potential markets we want to bring

this technology to.

1.Private households

In most private households there will be water supply either

by the municipality or groundwater. The water available is cheap.
For drinking and cooking purposes households will install water
purifier of some kind or will rely on purified bottled water.
 A few companies have made an atmospheric water generator for
households. Examples include Ecolo-Blue (US). These are placed
inside. They have output of about 20 ltr/day and cost in the range
of 70,000 to 1.5 lac.

Most of them are very expensive and water production cost

considering energy usage is high. Piped water or bottled water is
so cheaply available that these products cant compete at prices
and thus remain a niche product catering to wealthy green
customers.

Our model and approach

The product is not a unit to be put in private households but

rather a bigger community unit which makes water accessible to
everyone and thus helps in diffusing the technology to the masses.

The unit is installed in neighborhoods and water is

distributed in containers to nearby houses. Depending on demand
these units can be set up at significant locations.

Here the upfront cost for the whole community is very less.
The system is in the form of a small micro-grid of water sourcing
and distribution.

The 20 ltr bottled water supplied to homes cost anything

between Rs40-80. The water our unit will produce wont exceed
Rs 1/ltr. Filling the bottles and last mile transportation will be
cheap because of the ubiquitous presence of these units.

We can price these cans at Rs.40-50 for 20 ltr bottle and

serve a variety of customers located within 1-1.5 km of each base
unit. Recurring revenues are expected.

2.Public areas

Public areas have long been served with drinking water in

many ways. There were pyaus in ancient India on traveling paths
and in markets, serving cool drinking water to passers-by.
Fountains were building blocks of urban life in ancient
Greece and Crete.

Other countries in Europe, and the US built drinking water

fountains/kiosks which could provide drinking water to its
citizens on the go. The worlds first drinking water fountain was
installed in London in 1859. It was popular and there were 800 of
them by 1879. New York city followed and these were popular by
1880.
 But now, the bottled water industry is the king and nowadays
people associate clean drinking water with packaged drinking
water.This bottled water is sold anything between Rs 20/ltr to Rs
5,000/ltr in fancy bottles and feel good packages. The bottled
water industry is worth 100 billion dollars worldwide.

Our model and approach

The product we want to introduce is a drinking water fountain

which can be installed in public areas and in areas with high foot
traffic like layouts, parks, airport, metro and train stations,
bus stands, heritage and tourist spots. People need water on the
go at such places. They can bring their own bottles or get a glass
of refreshing water from the kiosk. Water is reprising its role of
an important building block of urban life.

These kiosks also have an internet connected sensor platform

measuring real-time air quality and environmental data. This data
is location based and can be used for a variety of GIS and weather
based applications.

We want to position this product at the emerging smart city

market which is huge and has high stakes. India will build 100
smart cities by 2025 and market is poised to grow to 40-60 billion
dollars by 2020. Urban population is expanding and cities need to
provide better quality of life.

IoT and big data market is growing at 26% annual average

rate.

3.Agriculture

The bedrock of the world economy is food, and has been for as
long as human beings have walked the earth. Agriculture is one of
the most water intensive industries in the world.

In India, most farmers still depend on rains for their crops.

Cases of farmer suicides and famine has become commonplace and is
a huge problem. Even the water subsidies will disappear after
sometime and costs of food produce will go higher.

Water availability is not the only major problem. There are

other factors like storage, transportation etc. There needs to be
a shift in how agriculture is practiced especially in water usage
and per capita production.

Precision agriculture, vertical farming, and data based

monitoring all need to happen holistically to make food production
higher and affordable.
 Our model and approach

Initial target is to focus on greenhouses and poly-houses

which mainly focus on high-end flowers or special medicinal
plants. These are sold at high-prices in many markets. The product
will be a small greenhouse with vertical stacking and growing
flowers using aquaponics. The water required will be generated
from the atmospheric moisture and precisely delivered to the
plants.

There will also be a platform to monitor the produce and keep

tabs on various fronts. Precision agriculture will be a 8 billion
dollars industry by 2019.

So, there is huge market potential in the identified markets

and a lot of scope for innovation in business models, thus
creating new potential markets.

E. Consumers/ users feedback

We did a survey to understand the user feedback to our

product and to understand what potential this technology has. A
sample size of 100 people were taken from all age groups and
professions.
The survey was conducted around Ulsoor Lake and Cubbon Park
in Bangalore. It was an open survey in which we asked them to
openly talk about their views on water in general. A lot of
interesting feedback was received.
40% of the people that were surveyed reported of having no
problems with drinking water and doesnt believe any type of
shortage is there. The other 60% complained of getting dirty
unhygienic water and water being polluted.

Source of water - 68% didnt know where the water in

Bangalore was sourced from. While the other 32% were aware that
the water was coming from Cauvery river. A large amount of people
don't know the source despite 43% of the surveyed were getting
water from tap which was then filtered using purifiers such as
Aqua guard. 8% had their own bore wells to supply them water while
10% get water at their homes filled by water tankers and the rest
39% buy the water cans that are available in each neighborhood.

On importance of water and its preservation - 79% of the

people however had a positive attitude towards water conservation
and felt wastage and polluting of water is a major problem that
needs to be taken care of.

Views on public drinking water fountains - We also asked them

how they feel about public fountains and wether they would drink
from them. 24% said that they will not drink from fountains. 8%
said they do not prefer fountains while the rest 68% said yes to
drinking from public water fountains. Major concerns were quality
of water and proper maintenance.

After these open ended discussions and understanding the

needs we asked everyone of them about the first product we want to
develop, the public drinking fountain.

Initial rendering which we used for user feedback

The response - When asked if they would drink from it after

explaining what the product and technology does 92% said yes, they
will prefer drinking from it over other sources such as bottled
water. Most of them seem excited about the technology and what
impact it could have.

So, the feedback was highly positive and it gives us great

hope in the product we are building.