IndiaOn

Entrepreneur of the Month: Ranjiv Khush

We kick of 2008 with an inspiring Indian who is tackling one of gravest problems plaguing the developing world – water purification. Ranjiv Khush is a microbiologist and immunologist, with degrees from the Universities of California at Davis and Santa Cruz. Ranjiv grew up in India and the Phillipines, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre National de Recherché Scientifique in Paris, France. As if this wasn’t impressive enough, Ranjiv is one of the founders of the Aquaya Institute, a non-profit organization partnering with the likes of the Gates Foundation to develop strategies and technologies that bring clean water to developing nations.

The Organization

The Aquaya Institute is a non-profit that delivers scientific and technical innovation for preventing waterborne disease to developing countries. The World Health Organization estimates that globally 4000-5000 children under 5 die from diarrheal disease every day – more than die due AIDS and malaria combined. India has the largest share of diarrhea related disease and death. Aquaya has been around for 2.5 years and positions itself as a research and consulting group that provides new ideas and solutions to reduce the burden of diarrheal disease in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Aquaya provides: Products: New technologies that can be made available through the public or private sector Strategies: Consumer research for understanding consumer behavior and attitudes towards water consumption and personal hygiene around the world and scientific methods for measuring the health and social impacts of new products and programs.

In some part, the company was motivated by the 2004 tsunami in Asia. Traditionally when you think about water purification and delivery, you think about pipes and large government projects. Ranjiv and his colleagues observed, however, that simple household products that could be made available through the private sector, such as ceramic filters, could be very effective in reducing diarrheal disease. This fueled the larger scale approach to innovate products and technologies that could be made available to the large consumer public at competitive prices through either private or public sector distribution channels.

So what’s the current status of the private sector in the water purification space? There are some companies that are targeting the middle class. Aquaya is developing technologies that are more cost-effective and better suited to lower socioeconomic strata. In addition, Aquaya is working on improving consumer awareness of water quality in developing countries through the Aquatest research program, an international, multi-disciplinary consortium led by the University of Bristol. Aquatest’s goal is to deliver a low-cost water test for developing countries and has received $13 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Aquaya will be working with partners in India to refine the test design and to determine how water quality information influences water management behaviors.

It’s about Understanding Behaviors.

Ranjiv emphasizes that we still do not have a good idea of consumer preferences: what people like, and what they will pay for. For instance, the cheapest way to purify water is to use 3 or 4 drops of bleach into a liter. However, consumer behavior research shows that many people do not like this solution because of the smell of chlorine. In parts of Latin America and South-East Asia, people use ceramic pots to purify their water. Understanding these behaviors is critical to the development of more effective technologies. There may also be regional preferences that need to be taken into consideration.

Why Sell It, Why Not Give It Away?

There is a lot of debate about whether private sector distribution channels are more effective than traditional humanitarian aid for reaching people at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’. One hypothesis is that if you give people things, they don’t value them as much. Another idea is that there tends to be more consistency in the private sector – government initiatives tend to be subject to the motives of a reigning politician.

Learn More

Find out more about the Aquaya Institute and support their work by visiting their website: www.aquaya.org

Former Entrepreneurs of the Month
December – Vipul Vyas
November – Shondip Ghosh

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