Short Takes: Bringing Safe Water to Rural India

Meet Divya Yachamaneni, CEO of Naandi Community Water Services, a for-profit social enterprise bringing safe drinking water to rural communities across India. Hear how this mission-led company made a strategic pivot to get the “urban rich” to help subsidize and ultimately scale its impact.

Coming from an urban environment, Yachamaneni had no idea how widespread and severe the problem of contaminated water really is. Visiting rural communities made the issue crystal clear. In one village, she recalls, “They were drawing water from almost a sewage canal, putting it in the sun for odor, filtering it with a cloth for dust, and once the odor was gone, they started to drink it.”

Today, Naandi Water sets up water purification systems in such communities and sells the purified water back to families for a nominal charge, about $2.50 per month. The model relies on community ownership from day one so the villagers can ultimately run the water center themselves.

Even with the company’s success, scaling on a national level proved difficult without increasing costs. That’s when Yachamaneni explored a new strategy: selling bottled water to urban consumers to subsidize their work. While she was met with intense resistance by those who thought the plan veered from the NCWS mission, she ultimately prevailed. And the tagline on each bottle reinforces the strategy: “One hundred percent of the profits will go to supporting those people in rural India who don’t have water to drink.”

Listen to how Yachamaneni’s entrepreneurial persistence and Naandi’s strategic pivot have paid off, creating more opportunities for safe drinking water in rural communities.

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