IOT powered purifiers for safe drinking water

HYDERABAD:  How safe is your ‘filtered’ drinking water? Testing water samples randomly might provide a snapshot of water quality at one specific time, however, a contaminant could develop after testing and go unnoticed for months. To counter this, smart solutions for water quality monitoring are gaining importance. 

“Parameters for quality drinking water change from one locality to another, one community to another, even from one house to another. To ensure safe drinking water every time, we need to calculate data at every house,” says Manas Ranjan Hota, founder, DrinkPrime. The startup focused on solving urban India’s drinking water problem has 30,000 active users in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

A data-driven model, it blends a water purifier subscription service along with sensors to track a household’s water input and consumption in real-time. The seven-stage filtration process gives access to clean water on tap while being charged on a pay-as-you-use model. 

Manas along with Vijender Reddy founded the company in 2016, where they built a water purifier, with Internet of Things (IoT) and sensors at different points which sends data for each purifier. Using this data, their AI engines take smart decisions to ensure every customer gets safe drinking water, every time.

How is their system better than traditional purifiers? Manas says that unlike a sales-based model, with their end-to-end ownership, and data-driven service model, they can control and manage the entire life-cycle, and be able to give the right service to each family, individually. With the mission to provide safe and affordable drinking water to all, Manas adds: “Unlike a TV, fridge or washing machine, a water purifier gives safe drinking water only if it is serviced on time, and correctly.”

How does the app work?

• Water purifier with a sensor is synced with a user’s smartphone over Bluetooth
• The app sends consumption and other data from phone to the cloud to track usage and water input
• Data sent from IoT sensors to its servers is encrypted, and cannot be viewed without decryption key Top three parameters of quality drinking water
• Environment conditions
• Amount of water consumed
• Quality of input water

— Tamanna S Mehdi  tamanna@newindianexpress.com  @tamannamehdi