Role Of Startups In Creating Sustainable Water Solutions On the third day of TiE Sustainability Summit 2021, one of the key discussions revolved around the use of technology to resolve the water crisis in India

TiE Sustainability Summit 2021 (TSS- 2021) that began on Monday 4th addressed the most pertinent subject today, which is sustainability. Hosted by TiE Hyderabad, the summit had 40,000 registrations from social enterprises across 55 countries and 5 continents. A platform for entrepreneurs to share their thoughts on sustainability, the summit featured 225 speakers, 65 sessions over six tracks and 200 investors.

Delivering the welcome note, Manohar Reddy, chair of TSS 2021 and president of TiE Hyderabad said sustainability is the new oil and offers a lot of opportunities. "While the whole world is discussing sustainability, we have already started acting. We are having this summit because I believe we need to meet our needs of natural resources, without compromising and affecting the needs of future generations. With that thought in mind the conference was conceptualized," explained Reddy.

Further, the keynote address was delivered by Gautam Adani, chairman, Adani Group. "A few research studies indicate that the Indus Valley civilization underwent a period of climate change about 4,000 years ago. The outcome then appears to be uncertain. However, today, we are aware of the effects of climate change and hence the outcome should not be uncertain," said Adani.

Leveraging Tech To Resolve Water Crisis

According to NITI Aayog report in 2018, 600 million people, or nearly half of India's population, face extreme water stress and three-fourths of India's rural households do not have piped, potable water and rely on sources that pose a serious health risk. It also said that India has become the world's largest extractor of groundwater, accounting for 25 per cent of the total and 70 per cent of our sources are contaminated. It also said that our major rivers are dying because of pollution.

On day 3 of the TSS- 2021, a panel consisting of Varun Sridharan, founder and CEO, Greenvironment Innovation and Marketing India Ltd, Vinay Chataraju, co-founder, Kritsnam Technologies, Vanitha Mohan, chairman of Pricot and founder of Siruthuli and moderated by Venkat Kamalakar co-founder of Garphi Biosciences discussed how and why community engagement is key to creating sustainable water solutions.

Talking about technology, Mohan said, "In rural India, technology is not that prevalent. We have stormwater drains in the urban scenario. But all of them are sewages. Most of the sewages are let into these. We use technology to identify issues. But at the end of the day, there should be action, we need to use technology for action. Else it will go down the drain. Lack of awareness is more in cities. That should change."

Adding to how technology should be used and the role of governments, Chataraju said, "Glaciers have been one of the major monitoring points for us in terms of climate change. In India, glaciers are managed by few organizations. It has never been on a commercial scale. We have been collecting data, but it has not been used much. More private organizations should come into collection and utilization of data."