NEER - clean water to all | Dell Social Innovation Challenge

CATEGORY: Water

NEER - clean water to all

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NEER - a simple water purifier that combines nano technology with indigenous materials to make clean drinking water available and easily accessible to all; with an intent to build a ecosystem of clean water users.

Standings & Awards

1313 out of 1313 in Asia
69 out of 69 in Water
930 out of 930 in Define
555 out of 555 in For-Profit
4003 out of 4003 Overall

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VOTES

NEER

Neer – indigenous, reliable, sustainable and affordable clean water solution to all.

Our proposed product addresses problems related to water in India. According to World Bank, out of the population of 1.2 billion people in India, 81% of people lack safe water. The health burden of poor water quality is enormous. A research study on pollution levels in UP indicate that water consumed contains dissolvable solids and metals beyond acceptable levels prescribed by WHO.

Our product - a water filter ‘NEER’, provides indigenous solutions to problems related with polluted water in India. Main constituents of the filter are: Coconut Coir, Carbon Nanotube and Mesh Filter. Coconut coir filters the dirt particles and small sand grains from impure water. Carbon Nanotube is the main component of the filter. Water molecules can pass through its interiors, while toxic metal ions, viruses, and bacteria cannot. Hence, it leads to the filtration of bacterial contaminants such as the nanometer-sized poliovirus from water. Mesh filter can also be used for screening ionic impurities, if any and it can be customized to suit the local conditions. The filters are known to achieve 99.9% purity.

There are many filters available in the market. The distinctiveness of our product is its use of indigenous technologies (coconut coir), ease of manufacturing, cheap price and easy availability of components. The targeted audience is mainly the people living in rural areas of India who cannot afford to spend much on these products.

For marketing we plan to build on the existing microfinance networks with focus on states of Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh initially and scale up by building a ecosystem of clean water users. Publicity will be through rural coordinators/self help workers/anganwadi workers and sales force to visit districts every week. We target the price of the filter to be INR 500/USD 10. We are considering a initial funding from ‘Technology Entrepreneurship Promotion Program’ of Government of India/NGOs of INR 10 lakh/USD 20,000 and plan to collaborate with village local administration to rollout our products in villages. We plan to break-even in 3-4 years with a projected sales of 1.2 million units in five years.

NEER is a self-sustainable water purifier that combines the latest technology with indigenous materials. By making it affordable for all we plan to earn smiles.

FIVE PROJECT QUESTIONS Required (60 - 90 minutes)

1. What is your innovation?

NEER's innovation is technology re positioning. Through NEER we intend to bring the technology used in NASA and researched in worlds top universities like MIT, CMU and IITs to the doorsteps of the people who will benefit the most from it. NEER is a mobile water purifier which is cheap, light, maintenance free and has the potential to achieve 99.9% purity. It has the potential to make pure drinking water available to everyone around the world. We plan to start it out by implementing in India.

2. Who gains the most?

NEER has the potential to transform the clean water needs across the world, particularly in developing nations. NEER will make clean drinking water accessible to population across all socio economic groups, especially below poverty line and lower middle class families. NEER benefits the most to people with limited access to clean drinking water by aiming to provide safe drinking water at a affordable cost and also ensuring sustainability of the drinking water purification systems.

3. Who pays?

NEER is a response to a social need and the social enterprise model for NEER is developed based on the market dynamics.The below poverty line and middle income group families who are the target segment for NEER will pay for the filters. The sale price for NEER is estimated to be INR 500/USD 10 and the filters have a life span of one year. NEER is developed as a self sustaining model with a break even period of 3-4 years and a target to sell 1.2 million units in 5 years in two states in India.

4. What is your success?

NEER is a social enterprise model and is envisioned to address the clean water needs of the society. NEER's immediate success factors will be purity of water consumed and and increase in clean water consumption. On a long term NEER aims to decrease in number of hospital cases due to communicable disease, increase in employment rate and increase in expanded reach. NEER will continually focus on monitoring product usage and development through R&D and collaboration with the research universities.

5. How will you do it?

NEER's model focuses on overall economic development by building local product manufacturing, generating employment and developing an ecosystem of clean water users. NEER social enterprise model has been developed with a hands-on approach. NEER has been developed as a 'ready to go' model, taking into consideration the skill set, expertise of the team and the existing market conditions. With the right kind of motivation and guidance we (the project team) are ready to launch NEER in the community.