Six water, sanitation startups win Rs 25 lakh each

NT Bureau

Bengaluru

For 29-year-old Shilpa K Nayana, nothing, not even her four-month-old baby son, Rio aka Rayan Nayana Arjun, could come in the way, as she pitches her already award-winning project Jalam, at Karnataka Water and Sanitation Sustainability Summit held in Bengaluru. She was among the 20 startup social entrepreneurs shortlisted from 119 applications to pitch their project at the summit on October 29.

As the summit wound up late in the evening, six of the 20 were announced as winners of a grant of Rs 25 lakh and a chance to pilot their innovations in collaboration with the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR). Nayana's project Jalam, a low-cost water filtration technology that can be used at household level as well as community level, was among the six chosen projects."The working cost for decontamination of water with my filter that uses nanotechnology is as low as Rs 2 per litre," said the social entrepreneur who envisioned Jalam as her final year project when she was doing biotechnology and bio-chemical engineering in Thiruvananthapuram, almost six years ago. A resident of Kozhikode in Kerala, Nayana said she got lucky because her university funded her project, which she developed to tackle water contamination in the aftermath of 2018 floods, giving her a chance to transition from theory to a product.

"The award at the summit came at a time when I am in a way battling postpartum depression. Besides the money, recognition is working wonders, and I know I am not going to be in this slump anymore," said Nayana, who came to the summit with Rio nestling on her shoulders. Her product is all set to be marketed under her company Dime Klear Pvt Ltd that she has floated with a partner.One of the other winners of the startup battle is an18-year-old first year student of Computer Science and Data Analytics at Indian Institute of Technology Patna, who along with three other students of Manipal University has developed Magnetic Arsenic Removal Unit (MARU), driven by patented Molecular Magnetic Treatment. "We are done with commercial pilot trials at nine schools in Patna, Bhojpur and Baxar of Bihar, but yet to commercialise," said Abhijeet Kumar to PTI after