Water ATMs emerge in India’s urban slums — a clean water breakthrough?

Many of the residents of Savda Ghevra — a resettled slum in the western part of Delhi, India — spend several hours a day acquiring water for basic daily needs like drinking, washing, and cooking. The cumbersome and time consuming process often involves waiting in long lines for sporadic trips from government-sponsored water tankers, and long walks with heavy containers to water sources that are at risk for being unclean.

But a for-profit five-year-old startup called Sarvajal (“water for all” in Sanskrit), which is backed by the Piramal Foundation, is trying to offer a better way. The company has built a business off of developing franchise-run water filtration and distribution services in rural areas of India and is now in the process of launching newly-developed connected ATM-style systems that can distribute low cost, clean water to customers using an ATM card.

Sarvajal already has 35 of its water ATMs…