siliconindia | | February 20138inIn a country where shortage of drinking water is a significant crisis, very few entrepreneurs have decided to address the situation. Sarvajal is one such organization which is working towards solving India's water crisis. Since it was established in 2008, Sarvajal has addressed the needs for clean drinking water especially in rural areas. Sarvajal was started in 2007 as an experiment on non Profit basis, but its growing popularity and mounting needs of people helped reform the company to its present stature. Sarvajal set up water ATMs across all northwestern states of India, and established filtration plants which worked on the concept of reverse Osmosis. Anand Shah, Founder & CEO of Sarvajal, a graduate in evolutionary biology from Harvard University was born and raised in Texas. He facilitated the launch of media and technology charter high school in U.S., before moving to India. He founded several startups to help the Indian community including Indicrops and Teach for India but later decided that he has to work on something that is more vital and that demands more attention."We found that the single greatest intervention you could make was actually clean water, and nothing else," beams Shah. He revolutionized the drinking water business in India which was traditionally maintained by suppliers of packaged drinking water bottles. Although there were few charitable institutions which built plants to supply clean water, the model was futile due to lack of maintenance.Sarvajal had a family pay for the plant and had it set up in a village of 10,000 people and started selling water to the community. They also took steps to ensure that the machinery kept working without any pause. By integrating modern technologies, they can monitor and diagnose problems through mobile devices, before they occur. The company also ensured that every machine is transparent so as to understand the usage and be more economical. Entrepreneurial success lies on the road less traversed. A group of entrepreneurs have decided to live by this statement and have embarked on a mission which has literally been `less traversed' by any private organization before. T e a m Indus is an aerospace start up based out of Noida. The team consists of 15 members who are working on a project which aims at sending the first privately launched rover to the moon. Competing for the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP), the team is striving to design and build a privately funded spacecraft which will travel across the surface of the moon. GLXP which is also popularly known as Moon 2.0 is a space competition that is conducted by the X Prize Foundation and is sponsored by Google. The prize money for the winner of this competition is $30 million, which will be given to those teams which successfully launches and lands a spacecraft on the moon with a robot that has the responsibility of sending specified images to the earth. The total cost estimated for the completion of the mission is estimated to be about $20 million. As per Lunar X parameters each team should be at least 90 percent privately funded, thus these men are exploring various commercial mechanisms including selling merchandise to fund their mission. The team has received tremendous support from various government and non government establishments, including interactions with former President Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam. They have also partnered with several organizations to make this mission successful. As per their initial planning, the team expects to be ready for the launch by 2014. Currently there are 29 teams from 17 countries working on the lunar project with Team Indus being the only team representing India.Indian Entrepreneur's 'ATM' Solution to Nation's Water CrisisIndian Startup dreams to launch World's First Private Moon Mission
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