Startup Related Interviews
Water from the Sewage Treatment Plant to the Kitchen
Boson White Water, a Bengaluru-based startup, converts water from sewage treatment plants (STP) to potable water that can be used for various activities, including drinking. In a conversation with startupfirst, Vikas Bhahmavar, founder of Boson White Water, explains what motivated him to start treating STP-treated water to water for consumption. Edited experts…
Q. How do you use water from the sewage treatment plant to potable water?
A. What we have studied is that every apartment throughout India has a sewage treatment plant or STP. So after the STP implementation, only 20% of the treated water remains, which they use for gardening and flushing. If we see the per capita usage, if it is 135 litres per person per day, the flushing requirement would only be 45 litres per day and then twelve litres for gardens. So, there will always be excess water in the STP. We are trying to solve that excess treated water to be made helpful for someone by setting up our system. That is our primary motive if we can do this. Industries don't have to depend on freshwater. They can get high-quality water from someone else's wastewater.
Q. How did this idea crop up in your mind?
A. I lived in the U.K. before moving to India in 2008. It is like when you are in a foreign country, you want to do something for your country. I never came across lakes or rivers in other countries that smell bad. So, I felt terrible about our rivers and water bodies here. That is why I returned to my country and started working on water.
I worked in the rural sector for five years, almost like an NGO. We used specialized equipment to remove fluoride and nitrate from water. However, we felt we needed to do something about the infrastructure to create a long-term impact, so we started working on water recovery.
Q. Is it your brainchild?
A.Yeah.
In terms of technology, it is present throughout the world. Singapore, Namibia, California, everywhere this is being done. But we have done innovation so that it suits our market.
We have a design patent on the equipment, so Gowthaman and I work on the system together. Gowthaman Deshing, the co-founder of Boson White Water, focuses on the Internet of Things ( IoT) and machine learning (ML), all of which reduce the operating cost of the system and make it viable for our market.
Q. Did you face any obstacles?
A. The issue is that people are okay with taking treated water, which reaches them via tankers from the next apartment, but not their water. So, there's a significant psychological barrier, but it will slowly change. Our focus is selling to industries that value the high-quality water with our water.
Then again, right after the rain comes, people will start feeling okay. I'm getting rain, and I have my borewell water. Why should I depend on recycled water?
To talk about revenue generation, stable revenue generation, and stable impact work will be if industries start depending on our water. It benefits them and us, too. It benefits our apartment and environment. A lot of other hiccups, the transportation tanker network is a problem. The availability of technology for lots of components needs to be improved. Setting up a team is a problem in any business.
We also faced our own set of problems. However, addressing psychological issues has been the biggest problem.
Q. How is it used in the industry?
A. Okay, for example, this water is used in the laundry industry. A lower amount of detergent is required because the treated water is of high quality. The water is also used in cooling towers, centralized air conditioners, plastic extrusion, boiler, and semiconductor industries. People in these industries buy water from us.
Q. Are you targeting the health industry?
A. We can, but we don't. We can target any industry that meets 10,500 BIS or Bureau of Indian Standards of drinking quality. The BIS standard was formulated by the central pollution control board with the objective of assessing the quality of water resources, and checking the effectiveness of water treatment. The water, further treated that we are providing will be way better than any of the current water sources for them if the psychological barrier is not there. We have to work more on the psychological barrier.
If there is any other problem anywhere, they'll blame it on water. So that is why we have to be careful.
Q. What about the finances involved?
A. We are doing all the investment. We have partners, and the Indian angel network has invested in us. So we raised the investment for the equipment, which we put in the apartment, and we recovered the investment cost by selling the water to someone else.
So, it took us four years to recover each investment.
Q. Which are the places you are operating from currently?
A. In terms of operations, we are based only in Bangalore; two months ago, we set up teams in Pune, Hyderabad, and Chennai.
But it's the whole sales team. Our work has been established only here in Bangalore. We sell around eight lakh litres of water daily across industries, apartments, and other segments.
This is the only way for cities to sustain themselves in terms of water because we can only sometimes depend on freshwater, at least for the industrial segment. When we have recovered high-quality water, the freshwater demand comes down.
For more information, please refer to https://bosonwhitewater.com/.
