Smart Sanitation Hubs - GARV Toilets

Billions of people lack access to basic sanitation facilities and millions of kids die annually due to unsafe sanitation practices and lack of drinking water facilities. Underserved communities living in densely populated urban slums are mostly dependent on shared sanitation and water facilities, which are vandalised and improperly maintained. Subsequently, this leads to people abandoning the use of services and opting for risky practices like open defecation and collecting drinking water from unsafe sources. 

We developed a smart and indestructible public toilet, which is automated for self-cleaning, solar-powered, processes waste through decentralized bio tanks and is integrated with RFID, IoT devices for better monitoring and data collection. Through hundreds of installations we realized that people like an attractive, innovative facility which clean and well-maintained, but they need multiple services. So, we are now creating Integrated Smart Sanitation Hub that act as a one-stop shop for communities.

Globally 2.4 billion people lack access to basic sanitation services and about 1.4 million children die every year due to unsafe sanitation and lack of drinking water facilities. According to WaterAid, 774 million Indians lack access to adequate sanitation, 76 million lack access to safe drinking water. A report by the Indian Ministry of Urban Affairs on public toilets mentions lack of adequate number of public toilets, lack of proper maintenance, vandalism, broken fittings, improper lighting and lack of water supply and ventilation as key challenges to public toilets.

23.5 million people (34% of total slum population) in Indian slums do not have access to toilets at home. 18% do not have shower facility and 25% do not have tapped water connection at their residence. Even though 15% of the slum population in India relies on public or community toilets to meet their daily sanitation needs, only 8% of the government managed public toilets and 17% of privately-run toilets are clean. This leads to people practicing Open Defecation (OD). Women feel unsafe going out in the open in dark hours to relieve themselves and remain at the risk of facing sexual harassment and public humiliation.

Our target populations are the under served communities living in the densely populated slums who lack access to basic sanitation, hygiene and drinking water facilities. As cities expand and thousands of people migrate from rural to urban areas, the already existing inadequate public infrastructure becomes nonexistent to serve the people living at the Bottom of the Pyramid. 

Poor hygiene, quality of drinking water and lack of sanitation facilities cause millions of the world’s poorest to die from preventable diseases every year. Children under the age of five and women are highly vulnerable to these health risks. At GARV, we aim to improve the health and well-being of urban slum communities in the long run by providing hygienic Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services through smart solutions. We believe that by adopting an integrated approach to the WASH problem, we are able to put in protective barriers at each stage of the fecal-oral transmission route which involves fluids, food, fingers and flies. Our smart solutions collect data on usage, hygiene behavior and maintenance. This ensures that we work on behavior change aspects and provide clean, hygienic facilities 24X7.

GARV Toilets is social enterprise that provides Smart Sanitation Solutions to underserved communities in urban and peri-urban areas in developing countries. We provide integrated water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities through our Smart Sanitation Hubs. These hubs house smart toilets, bath facilities, drinking water facility, laundry services and a business kiosk where basic health and hygiene products can be sold.

Our start-up journey started in 2015 with the development of a smart toilet solution. GARV’s Smart steel toilets are portable, durable and maintained through automation. We wanted to plug in the gaps that plague the public toilet systems, i.e. vandalism and irregular maintenance. The steel structure and fittings ensure that the toilets are not vandalised. The Smart Technology used in our toilets, differentiates us from our competitors. IoT sensors collect data on usage, toilet functioning and user hygiene behaviour. It also activates auto flushing and floor cleaning depending on malodour percentage. Data can be visualised on a web-based dashboard which can be accessed by concerned stakeholders. Further, this data collection helps us in creating a user hygiene behaviour related data bank providing us precise insights for working towards behaviour change plans with the underserved user communities. 

Through our work in the past few years, we identified that there is a need for an integrated approach to the provision of water, sanitation and hygiene facilities. By providing these services at a community level than at an individual level, we realized that we can successfully overcome the infrastructural challenges that exist at the bottom of the pyramid.

The quality of water at point of source in urban slums have often been found to not meet safety standards. We provide clean drinking water that meets safety standards through our automated water ATMs at subsidized rates. Women residing in these slums who are working in the informal sector have to put in long hours at work. This leaves them little time to manage household chores like washing clothes. Hence, we offered laundry services at subsidized rates to enable these women to spend their time more productively. We sell basic health and hygiene products and services through a sani-kiosk in our smart sanitation centre which is manned by a local entrepreneur. By providing a multitude of services at the same place, we become the one stop shop for the needs of the slum community.

At the product front our USP is the usage of automation and smart technology for regular maintenance of WASH assets. RFID (radio frequency identification) and IoT (Internet of Things) devices help us in real-time tracking of functional status of toilets, showers so that we get to know if there are any malfunctions with equipment, or some spares that need replacement. Further, by detecting specific malodour percentage, we are able to trigger self-cleaning and flushing of toilets and floor areas. Another aspect of data collection is to get insights on user behavior, we get to track total toilet,shower, water usage and simultaneously record percentage of users flushing the toilet or washing hands. This aggregate data helps us work with the communities in long run for behavior change towards hygiene.

Moreover, towards the business model, we are the only smart sanitation solutions company working with local government bodies with long-term service contracts for provision of Integrated Smart Sanitation centers that acts as one-stop shop for all hygiene needs of underserved communities in urban slums. This model helps us in having multiple revenue streams and subscription-based services to end users.

As explained above, while prototyping our public toilet solution we observed that most issues of shared sanitation services are related with irregular maintenance and upkeep. During this phase the worked on the idea of real time monitoring of functional status of toilet assets and usage patterns. Our engineering team integrated electronics (microcontrollers, drives), RFID sensors and IoT devices on the toilet hardware. We did various tests and pilots for establishing a proof of concept, which gave us an evolving version of a Smart Indestructible GARV toilet. This technology helps us in following manner:

1. Increasing the operational efficiencies: As our backend teams are able to track the functional status of toilets, we get to monitor any malfunctions in toilets, spare requirements, water/soap replenishment etc. This data ensures that our on-ground operation teams are notified to take care of service issues with a reduced turn-around-time and increasing the functional time of toilet facilities. Moreover, the automation enables us to provide self-cleaning, flushing of floors and toilet seats to provide clean facilities for end-users and minimize the human interface for up-keep of toilets.
2. Data Bank for User Hygiene: We gather aggregated data on user hygiene, where we track the total number of users, percentage of users flushing, or washing hands. We track these data points to have an insight on user behavior so that we can positively work with communities on behavior change aspects in the long term.

Over the past few years of our operations, our smart toilet products were very well accepted in multiple geographies, we installed over 650 toilets in various terrains, 3 different countries, and generated enormous feedback from multiple segments of users. Few prime reasons for availing services through our products that the users continue to mention is the unique design and regular automated hygiene management. Communities, which were used to open defecation practices, subscribed to our services due to availability of clean and hygienic facilities, 24X7.

During our pilots and impact assessment studies, we identified that there is a need for an integrated approach to the provision of water, sanitation and hygiene facilities. By providing these services at a community level than at an individual level, we realized that we can successfully overcome the infrastructural challenges that exist at the bottom of the pyramid.  Around our Integrated Smart Sanitation Hubs, along with our innovative structures we create green landscapes such that the ‘filthy space’ yuck factor that is generally associated with a public toilet is nullified and the users are able to imagine the centres as recreational one-stop shop for hygiene needs and community engagement. Once the users are able to experience the delivery of consistent hygienic services from the centres they subscribe to it and work as a word-of-mouth marketing agents in the communities

We have installed 700+ toilets that serve 200,000+ users everyday and save 102.4 tons of CO2 emissions annually. Our mission is to reach 1 million+ users everyday by 2021 through expansion of Smart Sanitation hubs. Apart from creating a positive environmental impact, our installations also ensure that we create healthy communities by safe on-site disposal of waste. With an efficient scale up plan we intend to directly provide services to 5 million slum dwellers everyday in multiple geographies  

Following are our goals for the next year:

1. Expand the Smart sanitation hubs model across one metro city.
2. Directly impact 100,000 people through clean and hygienic smart sanitation hubs.
3. Improve the health status of targeted slum communities.
4. Expand our presence in smart city projects.
5. Roll out a mobile money platform for subscription of WASH services.

Following are our goals for the next five years:

1. 100 Smart Sanitation Centers in India, Ghana and Nepal.
2. Maintain the service and quality standards for hygienic facilities across geographies.
3. Reduce health expenditures of targeted communities communicable diseases.
4. Roll-out proactive detection of vector borne diseases through installation of smart bio-sensors in bio-digester tanks.
5. Work with governments in detection and prevention of communicable diseases by provision of data points on our smart dashboards. 

Following issues have to be looked at in next one year:

Government Regulations, Political: As we operate in developing economies, most of the times there is a ‘lack of funding’, ‘lack of political will’ and regulations that support the businesses in the sanitation domain.

Infrastructural: Conventionally, all the government bodies have relied on brick-and-mortar structure sanitation complexes built by local contractors. There has been an urgent need for alternative and self-sustainable structures that can be built rapidly and provide eco-friendly services consistently. The decision makers find it hard to accept an innovative system design.

Next Five years we will have to work on:

Financial:  As mentioned above, most of the developing economies find it hard to fund the development of apt sanitation, hygiene infrastructure. The scale of the requirement is so huge that all the help from the global multilateral agencies also falls short to reach the last mile communities. There is an expectation from private companies to fund projects.

Cultural, Behavioural: Culturally, many of the users who have been practicing open defecation for ages, don’t  realise its detrimental effects on our environment and communities. A large majority of people provide multiple reasons for not opting for a toilet, which range from references from religious texts, habit of defecating in open spaces, , or even a chance that they get to socialise with their fellow community member. 

We are looking to overcome the barriers by adopting the following strategies:     

Political, infrastructural: We have entered in two markets India and Ghana where the whole eco-system is supportive of the sanitation infrastructure. The governments have been focusing on improvement in this sector and have now begin to encourage innovative solutions. We are now proposing long term public private partnership contracts for 10-15 years to set up Smart sanitation hubs on build-operate-transfer mode.            

Financial: Through the contracts, we get revenue generation rights and the sites from the government (free-of-charge). We intend to work on a subscription-based model for provision of WASH services and also intend to raise sufficient capital for funding the projects.

Cultural, Behavioural: Around our Integrated Smart Sanitation Hubs, along with our innovative structures we create green landscapes such that the ‘filthy space’ yuck factor goes away and the users are able to imagine the centres as recreational one-stop shop for hygiene needs and community engagement. Our NGO partners generally have a good rapport with the communities, help us create awareness about importance cleanliness and help in designing and efficiently executing behaviour change communication plans for the long-term impact. Further, we have now started to employ local youth as our operational-franchisee partners, who help us in growing the user-base, maintain the centres and share profits.

The GARV Team is a blend of the right people with the right skills. We are a team of 29 strong with average experience of over a decade. The core team consists of 6 members. 

Full time staff: 18

Part Time: 3

Contractors: 7

GARV Toilets is the brainchild of Mayank Midha. He is an experienced Electronics engineer with a MBA degree in Rural Management from one of the premier management institute of India, IRMA. A large part of his career has been dedicated to social projects and manufacturing. He has handled multiple manufacturing projects for Telecom, Renewables, Farm Equipment, Heavy machinery and HVAC equipment. After his degree in Rural Management, he had developed a knack for development of hardware products that could benefit the BoP communities. While on a trip with his wife (Megha Midha) in India, they both realised the real shortage of clean and hygienic public toilets. After some primary research, they realised the gravity of the problem is staggering especially in the underserved communities.

Megha, is an experienced software engineer with 14+ years of multi-national corporate experience. She has managed large scale projects with expertise in internal resourcing and allocations with variety of clients. While developing the GARV toilet product Megha pitched in with the idea of using software for real-time monitoring of toilets. Both Mayank and Megha are equal partners in the company.

GARV today, has a total team strength of 29 people with variety of expertise in Design, Law, Project Management, Rural Management, Social Sciences, Software development and sensor technology. 

Our start-uphas been chosen for a few accelerator and incubator programs globally. We have been fortunate to be associated with multiple global organizations that have recognized our work and helped us in various domains from business model development, financial modelling, investor readiness, sclae-up strategies and funding. Following is the list of organizations:

• Toilet Board Coalition, Switzerland
• Water and Sanitation For All (SWA at UNICEF)
• Aqua For All, Netherlands
• IRC Wash, Netherlands
• Ennovent, Austria
• Cambridge institute of Sustainability Leadership, University of Cambridge
  
• Via Water, Netherlands
• Autodesk Foundation, USA
• Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India
• Village Capital
• Omidyar Network 
  
• Unilever
  
• Enterprise Growth Services at EY (UK)

The underserved populations in densely populated slum areas do not have access to basic WASH services. Whatever infrastructure is available is either vandalized, defunct, irregularly maintained or unhygienic. This leads to abandoning of infrastructure by target populations. In our effort to provide integrated WASH solutions in the Urban Slum areas, we work with a revenue generating, self-sustainable Smart Sanitation Hub. 

A hub comprises of Smart toilets, Showers, Laundry, Clean Water Vending point and a Sani-kiosk for selling various hygiene products to the communities.  A bouquet of services is extended to the community on a subscription-based model, where they can opt to avail services on a pay-as-you-go mode.  

We forge long-term (10-15) service contracts with local government bodies who provide us the sites for setting up Hubs and the revenue generation rights from the Hub for the period of the service contract, such that we are able to recover our investments and generate profits. This model, helps us in creating a win-win situation for multiple stakeholders, that is the Government, Low-income Communities, Our company, NGOs and corporations that work with us for social impact. Apart from the subscription-based service model, we also generate revenues through allied streams i.e, outdoor advertising and sales of treated waste.

Having Multiple revenue streams help us in recovering the investments at a rapid pace and proper operations of the Hubs. As we expand our footprint, we are now on our way to take the Hub model towards a Company owned - franchisee operated model. 

Setting up the Smart Sanitation Hubs at the outset requires substantial capital expenditure. We need to raise capital in the form of debt/convertible-debt or grants to set up the hubs under the existing contract. We also have an option to partner with an asset financier who could be a HNI, Donor Agency, Bank etc. and finances the capital investment for our assets. The operational costs are borne through revenues generated from pay as you go services offered.

Once the hubs are operational, as per our estimations every site would break-even in a span of 18 months and be profitable for the balance period of the service contract which is for 10 years.

We rely on multiple revenue channels to cross subsidize basic water and sanitation services. By making available a host of services within the same compound, we are able to optimal use of the land allotted to us by the government. We offer the following service at our Smart Sanitation Hubs –

• Pay-as-you-go smart toilet facilities at $ 0.07 per use
• Pay-as-you-go bath facilities at $ 0.14 per use
• Sales of drinking water at $ 0.03 per litre
• Laundry services
• Family subscription coupons for bundled services
• Basic health and hygiene products and services sold through sani-kiosk
• Billboards for outdoor advertising
• Sales of Bio-char obtained after fecal sludge treatment

Being at the Solve platform, we wish to connect with industry leaders and mentors to get a fair feedback on our business model and revenue model. We are at a stage where we have a huge growth potential in developing economies to impact millions of people in the next 3 years and save thousands of lives that are lost due to various communicable diseases.

We look forward to engage with social impact investors who would genuinely be interested in WASH, Health innovations and directly pitching our story. We are of the firm belief that being at the mecca of technology, MIT we would get access to the right set of people who would appreciate the technology developed by our hardworking team and would help us improvise further.

We would love to be connected and even be mentored by organizations like IBM Watson, CISCO, AWS who are the leaders in the IOT, healthcare technologies. We believe that there exists an opportunity to work on pro-active sensor technology which could be integrated with the Sanitation supply chain to predict disease out-breaks in low-income last mile communities and be a catalyst in saving innocent lives.

We would also like to partner, work with organizations which have delivered innovative retail franchisee models. 

Densely populated slum areas in developing economies are increasing rapidly with steady in-flow of migrants coming in from rural areas to urban areas. This population pressure on the already crumbling public infrastructure is creating havoc every passing day. Water, Sanitation and hygiene needs of the underserved last mile communities are the most compromised. a total of 4 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities. Our solution of creating Smart Sanitation Hubs addresses the issues in a holistic and sustainable manner. We are utilizing new-age technology integration with RFID and IoT sensors to track hygiene behaviors on a aggregated level to understand user hygiene practices. This further enables us in working with communities in improving behaviors in a very precise manner. Winning this award would allow our teams to work on technologies for integration of bio-sensors to pro actively predict any vector borne disease outbreaks through sewage systems of the last mile communities.

Women, adolescent girls and children are the most impacted lot that suffer every hour of their lives due to lack of hygienic sanitation facilities. They have to adjust their bio-schedules everyday and go out in the open, in dark hours to relieve themselves, many a times they face harassment, molestation and in extreme cases 'rape'. 'Holding on' through the day also leads to mental and physical trauma, where as practicing open-defecation is a compromise with one's dignity and being at the risk of multiple diseases. All our smart toilet installations ensure that we provide a rich user experience to all our users through automation, self-cleaning, and hygienic facilities. Specially for ladies, our toilets come bundled with sanitary pad vending machines and incinerators for disposal. This ensures all basic menstrual hygiene facilities extended at subsidized costs. With the idea of rolling out Integrated Smart sanitation centers we are making sure that all WASH facilities are provided for the benefit of communities. Laundry and showers ensure that women folk living in the slums, can avail all hygiene services at the center and spend their day earning livelihood, instead of spending time on washing clothes. We have seen that early adapters at our centers are women and adolescent girls. Winning this award, would further enable our resolve to improve lives of women-folk in the last mile communities.