Water shops

The Water shops empowers a village entrepreneur to create a sustainable business model in the form of providing clean drinking water to village citizens.

A government report from India’s NITI Aayog confirmed that India is undergoing its worst water crisis in history:

• 600 million people, or nearly half of India’s population, face extreme water stress
• 75% of India’s rural households do not have piped, potable water and rely on sources that pose a serious health risk
• 70% of India’s water sources are contaminated and our major rivers are dying because of pollution

The pilot of the 1M1B Water Shops started in the year 2019, when the 1M1B team identified the village of Narsapur in Andhra Pradesh as the area of intervention and partnered with Piramal for this intervention. The underlying idea of the project was:
By providing the community with a water purification unit and storage tank with enough capacity, it will lead to a reduction in spread of diseases caused by unclean water, improved health for the villagers and a reduction in hospital bills.

The 1M1B team used a rural ‘Shark Tank’ competition to identify a suitable local entrepreneur, Rajesh who conducted community research and confirmed that access to clean drinking water was a big problem at the village as people had to walk as far as 6 KM to get water. The entrepreneur was then employed and trained to manage the local daily operations for the water tank.

1M1B connected Rajesh to a company which helps in setting up RO water units, for which the funding was split 75% with a bank loan through 1M 1B and 25% with Rajesh’s own investment. With 1M 1B’s support,
Rajesh’s business now supplies water to around 25 villages around Narsapur, and at least 200 people collect water from his unit every day.