Rahul Pathak in Pune established Aquaplus Water Purifiers (Pvt) Ltd to manufacture filters that can purify water without electricity and reach the most remote areas in the world during natural disasters to provide clean drinking water.

During natural disasters, access to clean water is a challenge because the increase in bacteria, chemicals, livestock manure, and other impurities may cause pollution. Drinking impure water may lead to the rapid spread of diseases and aggravate the crisis by threatening human health. In addition to impurities, there may also be cases where drinking water is interrupted or unavailable.

Therefore, treating clean water as the first response to disaster management has become a top priority.

Although many NGOs and disaster relief efforts provide packaged drinking water for the victims, this situation requires a stable and durable solution because it can take weeks or months to restore the water supply. In addition, the use of packaged water also creates plastic waste problems.

Aquaplus Water Purifiers (Pvt) Ltd in Pune serves this cause through its unique water purification systems, which have provided much-needed relief to more than 50 natural disasters in the past 17 years.

However, the company never intended to provide services for disaster relief efforts. In fact, its origin is very simple, starting with an engineering student dropping out.

The founder of the company, Rahul Pathak, said in an interview with The Better India: “I studied engineering in Pune, where I realized the lack of logical applications in this field. I think calculations and theories make the problem more complicated, and the solution is It’s also very difficult."

Rahul said that engineering requires 60% common sense and 40% technical knowledge. "I realize that experiments and theorems will not benefit society as a whole, but using a logical framework to solve problem statements and come up with simple solutions will help better purposes," he added.

In 1993, he withdrew from academia and decided to sell water purifiers. “My inspiration came from a business my father was engaged in. He used to manufacture and sell filters using ceramic technology, which has provided industrial applications for automobile manufacturing companies. However, the economic recession of the 1990s affected the business, and his The marketing strategy has not yielded results," he said.

His father advised Rahul to improve his marketing skills, so he entered the business of selling water filters.

In 1994-95, he founded this company and eventually learned to make filters by himself. "I was marketing household water filters and decided to expand and enter the commercial sector by selling industrial equipment. However, many companies are doing the same thing. The concept of membrane filters for water filters has also become common. . I had to come up with a unique product to stand out from the competition. Therefore, I decided to make a mobile water filter," he recalled.

Rahul added that the water filter has a membrane and a thin paper sheet that can achieve four stages of water purification. They are microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis. "These processes ensure that 99% of the water is purified by removing bacteria, viruses, bacteria, salt, minerals and other unwanted products," he said.

Earlier, these membranes were imported from China. But over the years, he learned how to produce membranes, and even built a machine with scientists from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to make it fully localized.

The first opportunity to use a water filter occurred during the Jammu-Kashmir earthquake in 2005, when Rahul and his team arrived in the disaster area to assist defense officials in disaster relief work. "We offered to donate water filters to the army because portable water filters are a new concept. The army agreed to use them and place them in relief camps in the Uri and Tangdhar areas," he said.

This is the first time the unique filter has been used in disaster relief and has attracted the attention of Registered Disaster Relief Engineers (REDR), a group of engineering professionals who volunteer to participate in disaster relief work. "They registered a filter in the list of items needed for disaster relief. Later, some experts from Oxfam, an international organization engaged in water sanitation (WASH) work, approached us and asked us to develop a filter that can purify 4,000 liters of water within an hour. Water filter," he added.

“Mobile water filters are very useful, and they were later used in a number of flood rescue operations in the most remote areas of Bihar. Oxfam was impressed with the efficiency and began to place orders and export them to the UK,” he said.

Rahul said that the company worked closely with experts to modify the required water filters according to the Sphere manual, which is a collaborative effort of different NGOs to provide recommendations on minimum supply standards for disaster relief. However, his efforts to upgrade and improve the portability of the filter have never stopped.

"After years of continuous innovation and use of technology, we have created affordable, portable, low-maintenance and high-efficiency water filters that can reach remote areas of the country and purify water without the need for electricity," he said. "The filter has a 0.01 micron membrane and can use gravity, a hand pump or a fuel-driven motor to clean the water according to the availability of resources. There are four types of water filters with different purification capabilities."

Rahul said that this model called AP700CL was developed during a flash flood in Uttarakhand and is easy to carry in the mountains. Facts have proved that in many national disasters, it has changed the rules of the game. “It can purify 7,000 liters of water in 10 hours and has been installed in 1,500 locations during the flooding of Uttarakhand, Jammu, Kerala, Assam and Chennai,” he said.

According to Sarbjit Singh Sabota, an emergency expert at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), water filters play a vital role in helping people get clean drinking water. "Due to its light weight, the water filter is easy to carry, effective in emergency situations, easy to use and has different purification capabilities," he said.

He added that in emergency situations where fuel-driven generators cannot provide power, the function of the hand pump is essential. “During floods and hurricanes in Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal and other states, UNICEF used approximately 200 water filters,” he said.

Another unique feature of the water filter is its lower cost compared with competitors. Rahul said that compared with competitors' traditional filters, the cost of innovative filters is only one-third of the cost. The technology developed and built by the company makes them cheap, and we believe in making ethical profits. We want to make money to support our family and help the largest number of people in need," he added.

This unique water filter has also proven useful in other countries such as Nepal, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Lagos, Fiji Islands, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, etc., providing safe drinking for millions of people during natural disasters water.

Watch Rahul Pathak demonstrate the functions of the AP700 CL water purifier.

Sharing his challenges, Rahul said that reaching faraway places, poor road connectivity, estimating demand and predicting the intensity of crises always bring challenges. "In addition, the task of working with local people or organizations to provide quick help is another difficulty," he said.

He said that running a company with no business experience also posed challenges for the first generation of entrepreneurs. "Banks are not confident in providing loans. Also, my business is not a startup company or application that can attract venture capitalists," he said.

He believes that the water filter should become part of the disaster management agreement and be installed where possible. "In some areas of the country, flooding is an annual event, and placing such filters in advance will provide advantages in crisis management, rather than waiting for a disaster to occur and then releasing help," Rahul said.

He said that these plans are to make water filters and products competitive in the global market, and to ensure that Indian products can be delivered to most of the world's disaster relief efforts.

To contact Rahul Pathak or learn more about the company, click here.

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