AQUAYA
THE IDEA
A business-in-a-box to provide clean water to poor people: provide affordable parts, a business model, and credit to develop a wave of small water-purification businesses
Ranjiv Khush
Ranjiv became a microbiologist to explore solutions for water-borne disease. After a year as advisor to the State Department, though, he realized that the solutions already developed weren’t getting to the people who needed them most. He made an abrupt change of course and now works with a band of clean water fanatics in San Francisco to make sure that proven solutions get to where they can make a difference.
The best way to come up with something that will work is to find something that is already working.
Despite billions of dollars spent on programs to reduce disease from dirty water, more kids get sick than ever and more die from water-borne disease than from AIDS and malaria combined. There are effective technologies out there, but they aren’t getting to the people who need them. Microbiologist Ranjiv Khush and hydrologist Jeff Albert established Aquaya to get the right solutions to the right people in the right way. They found that enterprising vendors in Asia had created a thriving kiosk industry using off-the-shelf technologies to serve millions of people. Aquaya is now focused on making the same thing happen in Africa through a “business in a box” microenterprise strategy: create a business kit and financing mechanism to allow enterprising people to make a good living fulfilling a basic need in their own communities. Given the ease of entry and the availability of components, the potential for impact is huge.
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