Akamai's India Accelerator Program

More and more countries worldwide are experiencing extreme water shortages as a direct or indirect result of climate change. But few are feeling this issue as acutely as India. 

Despite being the second largest country in the world, with a population of more than 1.3 billion, India houses only 4% of the world’s water supply. The monsoons that farmers have historically relied on to water their crops have become unpredictable, forcing them to turn to the country’s quickly depleting groundwater supply. As a result, more than two-thirds of Indian districts are experiencing severe water depletion, and less than 50% of the population has access to safe drinking water. 

Akamai’s India Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Trust is helping to tackle this significant challenge. In accordance with the country’s CSR mandates, the trust allocates 2% of the branch’s revenue to CSR programs. 

The Accelerator Program, a flagship initiative of Akamai India’s Corporate Social Responsibility Trust, enables early-stage innovations for water conservation. 

Over the past three years, along with our mentoring partner, the International Center for Clean Water (ICCW; an initiative of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras), we have onboarded five social innovators, grantees in their cohorts: Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment and Foundation for Environmental Monitoring, SmartTerra, Jaljeevika, Agromorph, Solinas & Digital Paani. 

A springboard for early-stage innovators  

The Accelerator Program provides early-stage organizations with funding, mentorship, and other support to help them achieve a market-ready proof of concept and secure more funding after the program ends. 

Since its launch in 2020, seven organizations have completed the program: the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, the Foundation for Environmental Monitoring, SmartTerra, Jaljeevika, Solinas Integrity,  Agromorph, & Digital Paani.

Cohort 1

Foundation for environmental monitoring (FFEM)

Foundation for environmental monitoring is a non-profit organization based in Bangalore, that focuses on innovative, accessible environmental testing solutions. 'Affordable solutions' means reasonably priced and open source. FFEM (Foundation for Environmental Monitoring) created a simple, low-cost, open-source water testing kit for citizens. This test makes colorimetric tests available to citizens by leveraging Android phones, readily available chemical reagents, and color cards. 

Using these kits provided citizens, environmentalists, scientists, and policymakers with critical insights into the health of environmental water systems and the safety of drinking water systems, resulting in a better understanding and management of these shared resources.

Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment 

Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) is a non-profit organization that generates interdisciplinary knowledge to inform policy and practice toward conservation and sustainability.

As part of the accelerator program grantee, ATREE developed an open-source technology-based solution to help citizen groups and organizations at all levels participate in lake restoration & governance. Mira, the app, helped educate people in a way that allows for a common understanding of the lake ecosystem. Mira also assisted people in finding data-backed, verified solutions to common lake problems.

Cohort 2

SmartTerra

SmartTerra is a Bangalore based water technology startup providing water utilities with AI-power cloud-hosted analytics tools for reducing water losses. Most cities in South and Southeast Asia face severe water shortages and cannot supply piped water to 350 million people. And yet, these cities lose an estimated 82 billion liters of water daily. 

SmartTerra uses data analytics to locate leaky pipes, and faulty meters in the water network and help utilities reduce water losses and improve sustainable access to water for all. 

Jaljeevika

Jaljeevika worked to develop a self-reliant integrated aquaculture model to ensure food and livelihood security. Jaljeevika's mission is to scale impact through data analytics to ensure livelihood security to one million small and marginal farmers through the water value chain and micro-entrepreneurship.

Cohort 3

Agromorph

Wastewater to fresh water using a zero-waste algal process; Agromorph is a Mumbai-based algal technology start-up founded by scientists and MBAs (Master's in Business Administration) who want to disrupt our water consumption by reinventing fresh water.

Agromorph's proprietary technology harnesses the power of algae. It intends to install decentralized and large-grid eco-friendly wastewater treatment units, allowing any hotel/hospital/residential community/municipality to recycle >95% of its wastewater and convert it to chemical-free fresh water. 

Solinas Integrity

Solinas Integrity is a water and sanitation robotics company founded by Indian Institute of Technology- Madras (IIT - Madras)  alumnie and professors to assess pipeline conditions and eliminate manual scavenging. They create products that inspect and forecast the state of water pipelines, sewers, and clean septic tanks.

Solinas is addressing the issue of water pipeline waste and contamination. It is highly unorganized and manually managed, causing numerous problems for end users and pipeline companies. Through their intervention, they hope to reduce contamination and waste of treated water from pipelines. 

The team specializes in developing remotely controlled tethered and untethered robots that can enter pipelines and tanks, inspect inline, and perform a conditional assessment of the assets' integrity.

Digital Paani

The growing water crisis in emerging markets like India is a wastewater management problem. 

Digital Paani is a tech-enabled ecosystem to solve this supply and demand problem and tackle the urban water crisis. The developed solution is a lifecycle management tool that leverages proprietary software to manage operations for any wastewater asset based on the best technical expertise available. The team aims to build deeper intelligence of their software through deeper analytics and design engineering modules.

With its commitment to water conservation, Akamai strongly believes that the only way to bring change is to lead by example. We are deeply dedicated to our mission statement to make life better for billions of people, billions of times a day. 

The launch of Cohort 4 will enable more social innovators to create intelligent technological solutions to address water problems in India, underscoring Akamai's action-based philosophy.

Stay tuned to hear more updates on Cohort 4!