A short presentation giving an overview of what Sarvajal does. I was a Fellow there in Summer 2010, and learnt a lot.

1. Summer 2010 at Sarvajal
Prateek Bhattsamant

2. Introduction
Organization Name Sarvajal
Founders Anand Shah & Naman Shah
Enterprise Mentor Sameer Kalwani, CTO
City Ahmedabad
Name of the Intern Prateek Bhattsamant
Organizational Size 67
Organization Establishing Year 2008

3. Organisation
About
At Sarvajal, we develop sustainable drinking water solutions for rural and urban populations where the
quality of water is often the cause of more than 60% of common health ailments.
Our business is designed around scalable innovations, technical/process improvements, ensuring
livelihoods for local entrepreneurs, and developing customized community water filtration systems that
can produce ultra-affordable drinking water for the masses.
Our commitment is to make purified drinking water accessible and affordable to all.
Vision
To provide clean, safe drinking water at a highly-affordable price across India.

4. Service | Business Model
Sarvajal provides affordable, accessible and pure drinking water to the people
in rural areas who do not have access to it.
Franchisee business model
• Each franchisee is provided with a water purifying unit
• The franchisee operates the unit and keeps part of the sales revenue
Support Services
• Since Sarvajal subsidizes the machines, its in Sarvajal’s interest to keep
the machines running.
• The maintenance is provided by Sarvajal along with marketing support
are provided to franchisees to increase sales and improve operations.
Research and Development + Partnerships
• Technological solutions are introduced to help automate the machines
and provide necessary rural management support.
• Sarvajal has tied up with several vendors to bring the traditional cost of
an RO plant down by six fold.

5. Impact
Health Impact
Number of
water-borne
diseases
Number of
people drinking
water
Social Impact
Number of Number of rural
franchise water
locations entrepreneurs

6. Marketing and Sales | Pricing Strategy
Water is sold at 25 paise
per Liter
Which gets more people For every liter sold,
to drink clean water Sarvajal keeps 10 paise
The revenue is
This increases water reinvested to provide
sales maintenance and
marketing support

7. Marketing and Sales | Promotion Channels
Launch Educational Marketing
Activities Programs • Through the use
• Through local • Educate public of Hoardings,
festivals generate about the Wall Paintings,
attraction advantages of radio ads people
towards the drinking filtered are made aware
franchise water of nearby
business outlet Sarvajal outlets

8. Marketing and Sales | Distribution Channels
Buying from the franchisee
• People go to the franchisee, buy the water, and pay.
Water sold in specific quantities
• Water is sold in multiples of 5 liter, 10 liter and 20 liters.
Delivery boys
• Customers can avail home-delivery of the carboys at an extra
charge of Rs.4 per 20L carboy.
Prepaid cards
• Customers can avail the prepaid card facility, where they pay for 30
20L-carboys of water, and can get the water anytime they want.

9. Start-Up Story | About GDL
The Grassroots Development Laboratory (GDL) was established in 2006 as a partnership between the
Piramal Foundation and Indicorps in order to engage talented and committed young people to find
solutions to some of India’s most pressing development challenges.
 The GDL mandate is to work towards locally-appropriate solutions that have national
relevance and the potential to be scaled.
 The GDL takes an experiment-based approach that integrates innovation and best practices
while promoting social enterprise and participatory development.
 The initiative is designed to be an incubator for disruptive innovations and to be a partnership
with the local community to collaboratively improve conditions in Bagar.
Vision
To become a premier center for social enterprise in the global development community.

10. Start-Up Story | About Sarvajal
The Bagar Drinking Water Initiative was initially piloted at GDL in
response to health problems caused by fluoride contamination in
the local drinking water.
In order to ensure a scalable model that would drive innovation and
allow this disruptive innovation to spread across India, the Bagar
Drinking Water Initiative became Piramal Water Private Limited
(under the Piramal Foundation) in 2008, at which point the Sarvajal
brand name was introduced.
Sarvajal operates on a social enterprise model in which the product
is priced cheaply enough for India’s poor to afford and revenues are
directed towards maintenance and expansion.