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Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh on Tuesday launched an Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven water purification startup by IIT alumni to provide clean drinking water at a price much lesser than the market price.
Gurugram based M/s Swajal Water Private Limited is a tech Start-Up company founded by ex-IITians. The company is focused on innovative technologies to make reliable clean drinking water accessible to communities at affordable prices.
The focus of their IoT-enabled point of use Solar Water Purification Units is for slums, villages, and High Utility Areas.
The Minister also approved an MOU between the Technology Development Board (TDB), a statutory body of the Department of Science and Technology, the Government of India, and the company.
The Minister asked Dr. Vibha Tripathi the CEO and Co-Founder of the Company, to scale up this technology to help achieve India’s ambitious target of providing clean drinking water to all by 2024, as envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Minister said, apart from the Centre’s initiatives like National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) and Jal Jeevan Mission, Private Sector should come forward in a big way with state of the art tech solutions to cover nearly 14 Crore households where clean drinking water is yet to reach.
Referring to Prime Minister’s 75th Independence Day speech, where he said that in just two years of the Jal Jeevan Mission, more than four and a half crore families have started getting water from taps, Dr. Jitendra Singh said that the Ministry of Science and Technology is positively contributing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Vision and Mission of “Har Ghar Nal Se Jal”.
It may be recalled that Dr. Jitendra Singh launched state-of-the-art Heli-borne survey technology for groundwater management, developed by CSIR-NGRI Hyderabad with Union Minister for Jal Shakti, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat from Jodhpur in October, last year. To start with, the States of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab, and Haryana are being taken up for this latest heliborne survey.
The Gurugram based company’s patented system, ‘Clairvoyant’ uses artificial intelligence to optimize purification systems and predict future breakdowns. Thus, allowing it to remotely manage, update, and repair each system in real-time.
They have also developed clean drinking water solutions in the form of Water ATMs, which combine Internet of Things technology with solar energy to provide clean drinking water.
These rural Water ATMs by Swajalproposed to use solar energy to pump water from rivers, wells, ponds, or groundwater depending upon the location. The water will then be treated with appropriate technology to make it healthy & pure for drinking.
With this innovation, the cost of purified water is brought down to as low as 25 paise per litre.
Dr. Srivari Chandrashekhar, Secretary DST & Chairperson TDB, pointed out that this project is a combination of new emerging technologies like IoT, Artificial Intelligence combined with renewable solar energy to cater to the need for pure drinking water in villages and remote areas.
“With the financial support from Technology Development Board, a social impact start-up like Swajal could do wonders. We are looking forward to covering more states in India at the earliest,” said Dr. Vibha.
Shri Rajesh Kr. Pathak, IP&TAFS, Secretary, TDB, has said that this project will empower communities to plan & monitor their drinking water needs with community ownership and will get affordable, accessible, reliable, and clean drinking water 24×7 throughout all 365 days of the year. TDB is committed to supporting such innovative technologies for mass utility.