PURIFYING AGENT
SUDESH MENON 49, FOUNDER, WATERLIFE, HYDERABAD
When Sudesh Menon got a surprise call for a meeting with Dr K. Anji Reddy, founder of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, in December 2005, little did he know that he was on his way to realising a long-nurtured dream. Menon was then at the peak of his career, as the Malaysia country head for General Electric. Reddy wanted Menon to take charge of a project close to the pharma entrepreneur’s heart—providing clean drinking water to Indian villages. Next year, Menon was back in India, heading WaterHealth under the Hyderabad-based Naandi Foundation, of which Reddy was the founding chairman. Later, Menon co-founded Waterlife with Mohan Ranbaore, a former director of Xerox India, and Indranil Das, another senior Xerox executive. “We did a survey on drinking water systems, only to find the existing government model capital intensive,” says Menon, an electrical engineer from IIT Kharagpur. Moreover, these systems weren’t maintained properly. “We pioneered decentralised ‘community water systems’,” says Menon. The idea was to put up aesthetically designed water treatment systems in villages or slums, use superior technology to optimise results, including a 10-stage
filtration process, and offer periodic maintenance for up to 15 years. Villagers themselves are trained to form service teams.
Waterlife provides water at Rs 3 for 20 litres, which, Menon says, helps cover the maintenance cost. “On an average, beneficiary families save Rs 2,000 a month on medical expenses. The attendance of children in schools has improved as diarrhoea cases have dropped significantly,” he says.
Waterlife has provided more than 4,500 water management solutions in over 15 states, covering over 20 million people. It has now ventured into the African market (Rwanda). Its work has won kudos from the World Bank and the Institute of Rural Management in Anand, Gujarat, and also won the G20 Challenge on Inclusive Business Innovation in 2012.
“Waterlife uses technology to provide affordable drinking water to under-served populations in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. It has scaled its model in the poorest states of India” Jim Yong Kim, President, World Bank