After graduating from the celebrated Stanford College in 2019 with a point in environmental economics, Mansi Jain returned to India to discover alternatives on this area which may be transformative from each a problem-solving and entrepreneurial standpoint.
She didn’t have to seem any longer than her father Rajesh Jain, a graduate of chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Generation, Delhi, who had spent the final 25 years within the water and effort trade growing loads of water remedy amenities throughout India.
Chatting with The Higher India, Mansi remembers, “By the way, my father have been an engineer within the water and effort trade for over 25 years, and designed in addition to operated over 400 wastewater remedy amenities in India with the constant takeaway that 75% of those amenities failed operationally despite the fact that they have been key to the native water ecosystem.”
However why do those amenities fail?
In line with Mansi, all these crops don’t paintings ultimately for quite a few causes together with organic disturbance, apparatus failure like burnt pumps, or the choking of membrane filters that act as a barrier to split contaminants from the water.
So, is there some way for those crops to look forward to those issues and fasten them prematurely to toughen their potency and longevity? Suffice it to mention that there are a number of Indian startups these days which might be growing technological answers for wastewater control.
“India has about 90,000 put in wastewater remedy crops. However these days 95% of the marketplace is controlled solely manually through deploying operators in each and every plant. This has a number of drawbacks; issues are detected about 3 weeks past due after breakdowns and operators lack the experience to take on issues. Different applied sciences out there simplest make dents in a part of the issue; they just observe records or automate the important thing apparatus like pumps,” she says.
After months of brainstorming to know the way they may be able to remedy this subject in a scalable means, they began Virtual Paani in finish 2020, piloted an IoT-enabled instrument that manages end-to-end operations of a water remedy plant, and noticed “fantastic effects”.
Virtual Paani helps constructions and industries transfer against water neutrality and cut back water losses throughout their campus. To try this, Virtual Paani works in a stepwise means:
1) Maximise recycling through making sure wastewater infrastructure is operating effectively.
2) Serving to industries and home societies do water accounting real-time, know the place they’re having water losses, and supply roadmaps to cut back the ones losses.
3) In fact decreasing the ones losses through offering operational excellence and control thru generation for key property contributing to water losses akin to cooling towers.
In different phrases, Virtual Paani is a water control platform that tracks and manages a water remedy plant’s well being and plays duties like apparatus automation, offering WhatsApp updates to customers, and guiding procedure control.
Via providing real-time insights, entire regulate, and 24/7 control with actionable suggestions, they force operational excellence for sustainable water control.
As Mansi explains, “Recall to mind our platform as a physician for water infrastructure, telling constructions what’s improper with their infrastructure and what it wishes, in addition to offering the drugs to mend it, whether or not it’s directing technicians on WhatsApp about the correct amount of chemical dosage required, automating apparatus to serve as correctly or directing operators on the most productive subsequent steps. Thru our paintings, we lend a hand shoppers save crores in fines, however extra importantly, they recycle their wastewater — 90 million litres of wastewater is handled day-to-day at crops related to us.”
At the moment, over 40 trade giants, together with Tata Energy, Delhi Jal Board, Britannia, and Leela Motels, are the usage of the Gurugram-based startup’s generation.
Unlocking trade and product innovation
“When we log in design inputs in regards to the infrastructure into our instrument, we create usual working procedures for working the plant in real-time. Our consumer can visualise the asset (wastewater remedy plant) and will gauge its analytics from how a lot wastewater is getting handled to the standard of remedy being accomplished and whether or not the apparatus is functioning correctly or no longer,” stated Mansi all over an episode of Shark Tank India in April 2024.
“In different phrases, the buyer has a whole on-line instrument sooner than them to visualize their asset. If there’s a subject within the plant, our instrument can assess and interpret records the usage of AI to stumble on it. The most productive phase is that shoppers don’t even must be on our instrument to control those problems. Control movements are taking place robotically, whether or not thru apparatus regulate or through telling operators immediately what to do. Purchasers simply obtain alert notifications on their WhatsApp quantity to make issues simple,” she added.
Their product innovation, Mansi argues, additionally lets them free up trade type innovation. “As a substitute of turning into an add-on price for amenities like our competition, we will be able to de-risk adoption and be offering assured financial savings thru two fashions which no person else out there can do,” says Mansi, talking to The Higher India.
“First, we permit plant house owners to control crops the usage of their under-utilised group of workers like electricians with our machine and crew’s far flung control quite than outsourcing operations for lack of awareness. This lets them save as much as 66% of working prices,” she provides.
2d, as Rajesh notes, “We take all of the operations contract of a facility and make allowance provider supplier companions that offer bodily services and products like operators onsite to control clusters of crops as a fleet with a small commonplace staff quite than person deployments.”
How does Virtual Paani paintings?
Virtual Paani “integrates each and every facet of wastewater remedy operations and scales the experience had to take care of amenities” in 3 steps.
1) First, it ‘is aware of’ the wishes of the crops through figuring out how each and every facility will have to perform given its distinctive bodily configuration and desires. “We do that through doing a design overview of each and every facility on our instrument in addition to taking pictures operations knowledge from each and every unit operation in a facility. This knowledge spans a variety, from the usage of laptop imaginative and prescient to take a look at organic procedure well being, to having a look at electric records, power records, drive, vibration, waft, and so on,” says Mansi.
2) 2d, it ‘tells’ the wish to the related stakeholders through providing entire visibility thru WhatsApp and are living dashboards.
3) In spite of everything, it ‘solves’ the desire through executing the desired movements immediately thru automatic workflows, if it is coaching onsite groups, guiding their day-to-day workflow and validating their paintings or managing the bodily operation of apparatus thru our in-platform automation supervisor. When issues get started going improper, it makes use of records streams from onsite sensors and electric panels to diagnose the basis reason behind the problem and force factor closure.
“We even counsel operational and bodily enhancements. This method has remodeled defunct amenities whilst decreasing their prices through as much as 66%,” claims Rajesh.
How do trade giants use Virtual Paani?
Mansi argues that each and every construction and manufacturing facility can depend on native and renewable wastewater for as much as 90% in their water wishes, a very important reaction to rising water shortage amid local weather trade. Sadly, as she mentioned previous on this article, about 75% of remedy amenities finally end up dysfunctional as a result of operations are handbook and reactive, and the experience and abilities had to set up such complicated operations don’t exist on the flooring stage.
“We’re fixing the above factor through reimagining this trade thru Virtual Paani, which successfully scales the wanted technical experience to force operational excellence in amenities. This ends up in the transformation of non or low-functioning crops to fine quality, compliant devices treating 100% of water to high-water-quality requirements, all whilst decreasing working prices through as much as 30%. A lot of our shoppers had been in a position to cut back breakdowns considerably (as much as 85%) and cut back power intake within the vary of 20 to 35%,” she claims.
“Most significantly, they may be able to now hopefully reuse this water; a lot of our shoppers have long gone from reusing 45% in their water on moderate to round 80%. That is why main avid gamers within the trade are adopting our generation,” she provides.
Additionally, as Mansi notes, the benefit of integrating Virtual Paani, which purposes on a plug-and-play type, “additional complements its enchantment”. Remedy amenities of any dimension and kind will also be put in in 3 simple steps:
1) Web page survey
2) [Parallel] Any IoT deployment wanted at the flooring
3) [Parallel] Plant onboarding onto our instrument
“This complete procedure simplest takes 30 to 45 days,” she says.
But even so industries, Virtual Paani has additionally made forays into the residential sector.
“We offer steady experience for normal operations in addition to steering at the wanted retrofits in order that they may be able to get their STP utterly streamlined and deal with and reuse their water. Now we have transformed many residential STPs from dysfunctional to reusing 70% of water in flushing, horticulture, and extra. Many shoppers used to obtain notices and fines from the Air pollution Keep watch over Board previous as a result of they have been not able to control their operations, and we’ve got solved that for excellent,” she claims.
Adaptable to other environments
“Our instrument is very versatile, that includes complete configuration panels that simplify the mixing of crops of various sizes and applied sciences. At the backend, we’ve got onboarded each and every key unit operation in water control, be it organic remedy, chemical remedy, RO techniques, UF techniques or extra, so once we onboard a brand new unit, we merely tick that module and get the related analytics, automation flows, indicators, and so forth,” says Rajesh.
“This makes it simple to conform to amenities of a wide variety. Additionally, our crew is well-equipped to supply professional toughen for any plant control as required. As an example, at the present, we serve numerous wishes together with STP control for Taj Motels, ETP control for Britannia, general water control for Plaksha College, and a 70 MLD STP in Dwarka, Delhi,” he provides.
Pan-India presence and investment their ambition
Virtual Paani is recently operational in about 14 states and has raised about $1.2 million from international traders like Elemental Excelerator and Echo River Capital in addition to Indian traders like Enzia, Peer Cheque, SAE, DevC, Bharat Founders Fund, and main angels like Ashish Goel (City Ladder), Yamini Bhatt (Wymo) and Mohit Tandon (Delhivery).
As Karuna Jain and Shivam Jindal of Enzia Ventures, a challenge capital fund, say about their resolution to take a position within the startup, “Virtual Paani’s answer seamlessly integrates into current amenities, analysing the infrastructure’s wishes in line with more than one efficiency parameters, making those wishes clear to all stakeholders, and fixing for those wishes through automating unit operations and managing all human workflows together with coaching, SOPs, and troubleshooting. Via doing so, it is helping make certain steady and environment friendly operation of those crops, decreasing power, breakdown, manpower, and chemical prices to the music of ~25 to 35% over present prices.”
Virtual Paani is recently operating with greater than 40 wastewater remedy crops. Within the earlier monetary yr (2023-24) until February 2024, they earned revenues of Rs 2.2 crore.
Having a look forward, Mansi says, “Our large ambition is to construct the way forward for water and force local weather resilience through unlocking wastewater’s possible to be a key supply of water globally. To try this, we intend to construct the tech ecosystem for wastewater through no longer simplest operating with 5,000 amenities within the subsequent 5 years to verify they perform effectively but in addition growing records merchandise that substitute the advisor trade that drives infrastructure choices with a extra data-driven method. We additionally intend to permit each and every construction and manufacturing facility to be water-neutral.”
In the meantime, Rajesh notes, “Our eventual imaginative and prescient is to create water-positive constructions and industries that during flip considerably toughen high quality of lifestyles in our towns.”
(Edited through Pranita Bhat; Photographs courtesy Virtual Paani/Instagram, LinkedIn/Alexander Hogeveen Rutter, Twitter/Bharat Founders Fund)