WaterWalla opened its first store last summer in Dharavi, a slum in the city of Mumbai used as backdrop in the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire. The reality on the ground is very rough: 1.5 million people in less than a square mile area with little access to clean water. I wanted to do something pragmatic about it and leverage the opportunities I had while a pre-med student at Brown University.
The project started by six students at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design dreaming that they could make a positive impact in the world: Anshu Vaish, Soaib Grewal, Aamer Hassanally, Nehal Doshi, Darin Kurti, and Neil Parikh. Five of us were of Indian heritage. After exploring several problems and considering aspects such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we decided to focus on the problem of safe drinking water in the urban slums of India.
Since then, WaterWalla has grown to 17 students in the US and 3 full-time staff in Mumbai thanks to support from the Brown University as well as grants from IBM and Dell. One of the co-founders, Soaib, moved to Mumbai after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design to open the first store with a local entrepreneur and the help of a business manager.
Working with a local entrepreneur who has some prior retail sales experience and who shares our social mission is critical to reach out to the local community that we target. "Everybody is drinking the water... My parents, my grand-parents so why not me?" is somethings we hear every week and trust is the first barrier. To make things even more challenging, the median monthly income in slums is 6,00 rupees ($120 or $4 a day).
Yet, the health issue is considerable. Often the most marginalized group, slum dwellers rarely have access to clean drinking water. This contributes to an alarming 4,000 death a day in India alone. Diarrhea is a leading cause of absenteeism at schools in India. They occur from preventable waterborne diseases. The challenge hits home with students like us who want to use the resources, connections, and knowledge available in American universities to tackle critical social and environmental issues elsewhere.
However, we wanted to do it in a way which would create a permanent as opposed to transient change in the lives of the people living in slums. Sustainability was at the heart of our endeavor with the vision to create a decentralized, locally empowering solution to the clean water problem in urban slums. Turning to the burgeoning field of social entrepreneurship, the team formed WaterWalla, a social venture.
The corporation is dedicated to bringing safe drinking water to children living in slums around the world through the synergy of entrepreneurship, education, and partnership. Our team developed an innovative model that drew from our complimentary backgrounds in economics, industrial and systems design, and biology.
The model (left) employs a three-step procedure: partnering with technology companies (step 1), recruiting local micro-entrepreneurs (step 2), and forming a franchise network for the distribution of water sanitization solutions (step 3).
WaterWalla’s use of point-of-use technologies creates an empowering, decentralized solution to the clean water problem. By not having governmental dependence to invest in a safe drinking water infrastructure for slums, WaterWalla ensures that clean water can be had by large populations at will without any delay.
The organization aims to create a franchise distribution network. Our goal is to open additional stores in Mumbai this year and scale once we have come up with the "right recipe". The second leg to our distribution model is to work with women who will go door-to-door and keep the commission. We trained 36 women in 2011 and education is an important part of the mission.
We support range of solutions in our store because of the latent demand in the slums. It is important to get families comfortable purchasing a solution, much like in a convenience store in western countries. All products we carry clean water but hit different price points and esthetic factors.They range from 30 rupee pack of tablets that lasts all way to 5 000 rupee electric filters with replaceable cartridges.
Our hot seller is a 2,000 rupee filter that does not use chemicals but removes the bacterial load with a "bacteria magnet" as we call it. Most people are not comfortable with chemicals and trust is a major factor in adopting a new solution. The model aims to leverage the WaterWalla brand and build trust by engaging different community leadership organizations and larger corporations such as Bajaj, Eureka Forbes, and TATA.
Clean water is the ultimate end but it also has numerous side benefits. By fostering employment through the WaterWalla shops as well as empowering local women to form the “Avon-style” direct sales force, the organization improves the lives of slum residents in a very multi-faceted manner. It creates a win-win for all parties involved.
Each party forms a critical part of the overall WaterWalla model. The non-profits are important for the trust-capital that the organization needs to gain access to urban slum communities. These non-profits, because of their their long-term commitment, provide an important opportunity for partnership to quickly gain trust amongst slum residents.
Corporations form another critical component in the WaterWalla model. Because WaterWalla does not have the capacity to manufacture and produce its own goods, the model depends on corporate partners to provide technology solutions at a lower cost and ensure that entities on the other side of the supply chain (local sales force) are able to generate maximum profits for themselves. For corporations, they gain access to a new market that they previously did not have by leveraging the WaterWalla network.
Academia is the third and last part of the model. As Brown students, we are privileged to have easier access to the other partners, and think differently and try new models. For instance, by engaging students in universities and employing rigorous data collection methods, WaterWalla has a trained research arm measuring impact and making appropriate changes to the model quickly. Forstudents, they have access to real data for their field of study.
Our core mission is to ensure the welfare of slum residents. In the future WaterWalla aims to diversify its product lines to provide a wider spectrum of health benefits and increase hygiene and sanitation standards in slums. We do so by working with local residents and providing them access to the tools to ensuring sustainable access to safe drinking water.
Anshu Vaish is co-executive director at WaterWalla and a senior student in Economics at Brown University.
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