Water conservation has become an important concern as the amount of freshwater is depleting in the world quicker than ever before.
Today we have Mr K Shri Harsha with us who is making efficient use of technology to conserve water and ensure that there is enough water for future generations.
- Tell us more about your company Kritsnam Technologies?
Kritsnam has a mission to accelerate the global water consciousness. As a company, we aim to provide state-of-the-art hardware and software solutions to water managers to sustainably manage their limited water resources.
Kritsnam’s immediate goal is to raise collective awareness on groundwater conservation in India. To realise that, Kritsnam has developed an easy-to-use smart water flow meter called Dhaara Smart. The device can track the groundwater extraction, daily usage and provide alerts and reports to conserve the precious resource.
- Why did you choose to start this (specific) business?
The majority of populations in India live at less than Rs 100 a day and they depend on freely available freshwater resources like rivers, canals and groundwater for their survival. But as the surface waters are being polluted and ground waters are being depleted, the cost of accessing fresh and safe water is significantly increasing day by day. In the next 5-10 years India is going to face a critical water shortage issue where the top 20% of the population may be able to afford fresh water at Rs 10/litre or more but the majority of Indians will not be able to afford it thus it is critically threatening for their life and survival.
It is very important to solve the water issues of India before anything else. Believing that technology can address our issues, we are motivated to start the company.
- How did you get your idea or concept for this business?
The business is an extension of the founder (K Sri Harsha) master’s thesis. He extensively studied the river Ganga as a part of his thesis. He travelled more than 850km along the river bank to understand the ground realities of water management in India. In the process, he learnt that water management in India is majorly guesswork run by outdated heuristics.
Going deeper he found that the majority of the technologies to monitor and manage water in India are imported and expensive but still are non-functional at a majority of places. Also, the imported solutions are not designed for Indian conditions so mostly fail to deliver the expected outcomes. This realisation gave rise to Kritsnam.
- After all this success, what do you struggle with now?
Water in India is free. There is no financial merit in solving the public water issues in India. Solving water issues and generating business in parallel is very tough work.
- How does your business contribute to society?
Our business will make India water secure. Our work will support businesses, farmers and domestic water users to use water resources sustainably.
- Who is your role model and why?
Google: Changed the way the world works
Apple: Value of user-centric design
IIT Kanpur: Sincerity towards knowledge gathering
Vivekananda: Showed the true potential of the Indian community and inspired the youth
Adi Shankaracharya: Moved the world towards Advaita philosophy
- How do you plan to expand your business and what would you like to add to Kritsnam Technologies?
We would like to monitor all the groundwater extraction points that are used for commercial, industrial and domestic purposes. Handhold our customers to become water-efficient and water secure.
Our first targets are commercial entities like schools, malls, offices, hotels, hospitals etc, industries like distilleries, food processing, tanneries, pharmaceuticals, metals etc Mines like coal, granite etc
Slowly Kritsnam will expand to monitoring water for domestic water supply through municipality regulations and national schemes like Jal Jeevan mission
Kritsnam will soon add river and canal monitoring projects to its portfolio.
- Tell us about a project or accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career.
In Kanpur in 6 months with 150 farmers we could save more than 3 crore litres of groundwater from over-extraction using our technologies. We are recognized by Worldbank as one of the most disruptive technologies in the world. Work was also published by NASA, US IMPACT, EoS etc. as innovating and cutting edge technologies
- If you had one piece of advice to someone who is just starting his or her business, what would it be?
Find a problem worth solving, relate it to a business use case, identify a customer, develop a prototype and make the first sell. Don’t worry about failure; even failing in a startup is a great success.
