Summer 2010 at Sarvajal

Prateek Bhattsamant

Introduction

Organization Name Sarvajal

Founders Anand Shah & Naman Shah

Enterprise Mentor Sameer Kalwani, CTO

City Ahmedabad

Name of the Intern Prateek Bhattsamant

Organizational Size 67

Organization Establishing Year 2008

Organisation

AboutAt Sarvajal, we develop sustainable drinking water solutions for rural and urban populations where the

quality of water is often the cause of more than 60% of common health ailments.

Our business is designed around scalable innovations, technical/process improvements, ensuring livelihoods for local entrepreneurs, and developing customized community water filtration systems that

can produce ultra-affordable drinking water for the masses.

Our commitment is to make purified drinking water accessible and affordable to all.

VisionTo provide clean, safe drinking water at a highly-affordable price across India.

Service | Business Model

Sarvajal provides affordable, accessible and pure drinking water to the people in rural areas who do not have access to it.

• Each franchisee is provided with a water purifying unit• The franchisee operates the unit and keeps part of the sales revenue

Franchisee business model

• Since Sarvajal subsidizes the machines, its in Sarvajal’s interest to keep the machines running.

• The maintenance is provided by Sarvajal along with marketing support are provided to franchisees to increase sales and improve operations.

Support Services

• Technological solutions are introduced to help automate the machines and provide necessary rural management support.

• Sarvajal has tied up with several vendors to bring the traditional cost of an RO plant down by six fold.

Research and Development + Partnerships

Impact

Health Impact

Number of people drinking

water

Number of water-borne

diseases

Social Impact

Number of franchise locations

Number of rural water

entrepreneurs

Marketing and Sales | Pricing Strategy

Water is sold at 25 paiseper Liter

For every liter sold, Sarvajal keeps 10 paise

The revenue is reinvested to provide

maintenance and marketing support

This increases water sales

Which gets more people to drink clean water

Marketing and Sales | Promotion Channels

Launch Activities• Through local

festivals generate attraction towards the franchise business outlet

Educational Programs• Educate public

about the advantages of drinking filtered water

Marketing• Through the use

of Hoardings, Wall Paintings, radio ads people are made aware of nearby Sarvajal outlets

Marketing and Sales | Distribution Channels

• People go to the franchisee, buy the water, and pay.

Buying from the franchisee

• Water is sold in multiples of 5 liter, 10 liter and 20 liters.

Water sold in specific quantities

• Customers can avail home-delivery of the carboys at an extra charge of Rs.4 per 20L carboy.

Delivery boys

• Customers can avail the prepaid card facility, where they pay for 30 20L-carboys of water, and can get the water anytime they want.

Prepaid cards

Start-Up Story | About GDL

The Grassroots Development Laboratory (GDL) was established in 2006 as a partnership between thePiramal Foundation and Indicorps in order to engage talented and committed young people to findsolutions to some of India’s most pressing development challenges.

The GDL mandate is to work towards locally-appropriate solutions that have nationalrelevance and the potential to be scaled.

The GDL takes an experiment-based approach that integrates innovation and best practiceswhile promoting social enterprise and participatory development.

The initiative is designed to be an incubator for disruptive innovations and to be a partnershipwith the local community to collaboratively improve conditions in Bagar.

VisionTo become a premier center for social enterprise in the global development community.

Start-Up Story | About Sarvajal

The Bagar Drinking Water Initiative was initially piloted at GDL inresponse to health problems caused by fluoride contamination inthe local drinking water.

In order to ensure a scalable model that would drive innovation andallow this disruptive innovation to spread across India, the BagarDrinking Water Initiative became Piramal Water Private Limited(under the Piramal Foundation) in 2008, at which point the Sarvajalbrand name was introduced.

Sarvajal operates on a social enterprise model in which the productis priced cheaply enough for India’s poor to afford and revenues aredirected towards maintenance and expansion.