His father Loganathan ran a textile business. When Kumar was in the first year of his Bachelor’s degree, his father had a stroke, thanks in part to huge losses in his business. “I had to step up to do something for the family,” recalls Kumar.
The shop was handed over to the staff, while Kumar started settling the liabilities. The year was 2005.
The young man went to “every engineering college” that invited contestants to present ideas (36 in all) to pitch, won first place, and bagged Rs.6 lakh in cash awards. Kumar handed the money over to his mother.
The projects he presented as student included a ‘Bat-i’ that would give the wearer of a pair of goggles the sense of distance. It would find uses in situations like a child or even an animal trapped in a borewell, says Kumar. He rues the fact that the project didn’t get the funding for further research despite getting recognition in 2007. “People are still struggling with old equipment when someone is trapped in a hole,” he observes.
Through ionisation and de-ionisation, Kumar claims to have found a way to propel an iron sheet weighing 30 kilos into the air.
He then “stepped up” and presented a project related to artificial limbs at IIT Madras and won second place at the national level. That got incubated by IIT Madras and a few professors from the premier institute. His company’s name — Elbow Engineers — was born in this phase, when he would set up a team following this win. He regrets that he couldn’t take it to completion.
“I even got a grant of Rs. 2 crore from Loyola Institute of Business Administration in 2008. My team comprised students — four engineering, one medicine and two from IT analytics. They were from diverse fields and after completing their respective degrees, they wanted to take up jobs and support their families. I stayed with the entrepreneurial path. For about a year I did nothing. Then I worked on another project. I wanted to address the biggest problem — mosquitoes,” explains Kumar.
He would go on to create Catche, under a company Muktha Laboratories he formed with others, which sells ayurvedic mosquito trapellents, repellents and coils. With the Aachi Masala group, he was responsible for the Twin Bird brand of pickles. That was born to minimise seafood waste, while helping the local fishing community. It is incidental that these products also make profits.
The story of Kumar's life is captured in such ups and downs born of social challenges, even as he finished his Engineering at Velammal Chennai, Master's at Guindy Engineering College and PhD. in the US. His subject for research was again the mosquito menace and solutions to it.
Another social problem he picked up to solve helped him ride yet another crest.
India Calling
After earning his doctorate, Kumar started working with a Boston-based company, with the aim of trying to modify the pH level of water (which indicates how acidic or basic it is). He was also thinking of the water that is wasted back home.
When in end-2015, Chennai witnessed severe floods. In December that year, Kumar’s family was amongst the many affected and he too was stuck for a while with no flights leaving town. He would eventually decide to stay in Chennai, with water again being the reason.
Kumar’s ever-curious mind looked at the fast depleting source of water from underneath the soil and wondered what other sources exist.
While the cactus draws in water from its thorns, Kumar refers to the example of the desert beetle, which gets to a high spot on the sands and spreads its body to capture and condense water from air — the droplets, thanks to its shape, trickle down to its mouth. The shape of the beetle became the starting point for designing a machine that would draw water from air.
“This ‘technology’ has been there for ages. Even people put out blankets at night and draw water from air. I studied the architecture behind it and by bio-mimicking, understood how it works and recreated it. But the throughput is really, really less,” elucidates Kumar.
Would that be dependent on the humidity? Our rather ignorant question was met with an ever-calm and measured response: it depends on humidity, temperature, wind currents, area and so many other factors.
“How do I leverage the factors to accelerate the process? That was the challenge. One was the architecture, the other was the acceleration. I studied the vapour condensation cycle, used my technology, implemented it and arrived at a solution. When I went to the professors at IIT Madras, they said, ‘Kumar, everytime you come up with a good idea. But this time, you have to do it. Why don’t you pitch it to a business school, get funding and start your own company?’” explains Kumar.
“WHEN I WENT TO THE PROFESSORS AT IIT MADRAS, THEY SAID,
‘KUMAR, EVERYTIME YOU COME UP WITH A GOOD IDEA.
BUT THIS TIME, YOU HAVE TO DO IT. WHY DON’T YOU PITCH IT
TO A BUSINESS SCHOOL, GET FUNDING AND START
YOUR OWN COMPANY?’”
IIM Calcutta hosted the 2017 Tata Social Enterprise Challenge, at which Kumar’s invention won. But even before that, he started getting orders thanks to a video on the machine posted by his wife on Facebook. She is a 50 per cent partner in the business.
While IIM offered to incubate the business, Kumar wanted to go back to them with a business model. It took him five to six months, during which time he started pitching it to different universities in India and the US, to several IAS officers and the district collector of coastal Cuddalore district.
“I wanted to help the local fishermen community. I have travelled with them and understand their problems. One is the refrigeration box. The other is water. Even if they don’t catch fish, they have to come back if they run out of water. If they can use this machine, they can stay on,” he adds.
Asked about his affinity for fishermen, Kumar responds that there is no real reason except the knowledge of their hard work and lack of commensurate returns, even when the seafood trade is a huge business. The men who venture out to sea deserve more for their effort, he reasons, saying, “Their quality of life hasn’t changed one bit. They deserve a much better lifestyle.”
Kumar addressed thousands from the community in the presence of the district collector in 2018. Talks are on, to install his machines on fishing boats.
My70 and Teerthaa
Dr Kumar next to a My70 Intellect Atmospheric Water Purifier installed at his office in Chennai.
He went on board IIM as an incubatee the same year and one machine got installed on campus. Before which, he had sold 400 of the smaller units. At the time, he took a small token amount in the range of Rs.500 over and above the cost, and handed over the machine. Because back then, he did not have a team to pay salaries to. The smaller machines were sold even at a loss then by the social entrepreneur, largely at Rs.18,000 to Rs.20,000 per unit.
The same machines from Elbow Water Generators, sold under the My70 (bubble top) brand, now sell at Rs. 35,000 per unit. For the sake of comparison, another brand Air-O-Water Dewpoint claims to make 25 litres of water per day, and is available for close to Rs.60,000 online on Amazon.
Another player has a product claiming to make 30 litres of water a day, priced at Rs. 30,000. Kumar refuses to comment without knowing the specifications, but asks us to check all the details, including energy consumption, longevity and quality of water — all of these are impacted by the technology employed.
Kolkata-based AKVO claims its machines can make water at Rs.1.75 to 2 per litre. But it currently only has machines with a capacity upwards of 100 litres a day. It intends to make machines with smaller capacity in 2020.
An AWG kiosk at Secunderabad railway station launched in December 2019 supplies water at Rs.3 per 500 ml, or Rs.5 per litre, provided passengers carry their own container.
Putting things in perspective, Kumar explains that where the cost claimed is around Rs. 2 to Rs.4 per litre by other ‘Atmospheric Water Generators’ in the market, My70 claims to churn out water at a maximum operational cost of 87 paise per litre — including machinery and electricity. He credits it to the social entrepreneurship mindset he has approached the business with.
Interestingly, none of the players seem to put up the prices of their units on their websites upfront. The cost per litre claim would not typically include additional costs like annual maintenance and replacements over time, one understands from the detailed conversation with Kumar. For My70, the all-inclusive cost would still work out to under Rs.1.67 per litre, he clarifies.
He has received requests — including from other players — for whitelabelling his technology. Kumar has also got proposals for his machines to bottle water from and sell at a premium. He’s simply not interested in either.
“I have not created this machine to sell water bottles. I have done this to replace water bottles,” quips the founder, adding that the water from My70 is real mineral water, not RO water.
Larger manufacturers in the space have also approached Kumar. He admits to speaking to many of them and not being able to align his mission with their commercial objectives. Ask him about whether someone can break the machine down and decode the technology and his response gives us an insight into his mindset: “It’s a free country and anyone can try it, but I doubt it. If someone does it, and people benefit, I am happy. I am doing this only in the South. Let someone do it up North if it is helping people and not just for profit. I will happily help them.”
So how many end-users have bought Elbow Water Generators’ My70 so far? And what are the units selling the most?
“I started pitching the bigger units, but what I understood is that the people who buy bubbletops (cans), they are the ones who want an alternate solution. They are worried about the hygiene part because they don’t know where they are getting the water from. They also don’t know when they will get it. If I give this to someone as a gift, they don’t have to depend on the municipality or corporation for water, or for that matter even a private supplier,” reveals Kumar.
Around 1,250 units of My70 have been sold since December 2017. The first machine was sold to a Joint Director-ranked government official, recalls Kumar.
The My70 bubble-top which will now be sold under the MyTeerthaa brand
can generate upto 100 litres of water a day.
The larger machines play has been merged with a company called AeroNero, and is sold under the brand Teerthaa. Kumar dons the hat of Chief Technology Officer there. Aeronero used to don a different name and has been around for 15 years now but the technology it uses is different, clarifies Kumar, its new technology partner.
For My70, Kumar credits the offtake to several people, including the IIMs. He was introduced to several CEOs and entrepreneurs, and even media, thanks to the institutes’ network.
Ask him how the My70 is different from the other offerings in the market that claim to make water from air, and he categorically refers to the technology used.
“WE HAVE BIO-MIMICKED WHAT DESERT
CREATURES DO. EVEN THE TREE DOES IT —
CAPTURES HUMIDITY AND REPLENISHES GROUNDWATER.
NATURE HAS GIVEN A LOT OF SOLUTIONS.
ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS OBSERVE,
UNDERSTAND AND REPLICATE IT."
We have bio-mimicked what the desert creatures do. Even the tree does it — captures humidity and replenishes groundwater. Nature has given a lot of solutions. All we have to do is observe, understand and replicate it. The difference is in technology; even the AC produces water, but it consumes a lot of power, and produces a lot of gas. My unit consumes as much power as a fan,” he adds.
He points to My70 units installed in 2017 that are still going strong. They can last 10 years with proper maintenance, claims Kumar, going beyond the one year guarantee. The company has on offer annual maintenance contracts, just like any home appliance brand would.
The other aspect of the device is that it acts as an air purifier. When the team presented it in NCR, the air quality reading was over 300 micrograms per cubic metre. In a matter of minutes, the unit brought it down drastically, informs Kumar. “I tell people to put this in their bedrooms, it will remove the micro bacterials and stop spread of viral infections. You can purify the room and then move it to where you want it. It has three stages of purification,” he adds.
The Mindset Issue
Given the solid proposition, the offtake should have been much higher, we pose. So what has kept sales down to the number it is at?
“When you say we are taking water out of air, the first thing people do is start panicking,” he notes. According to one online resource, the amount of water that evaporates into the atmosphere is in excess of 1 trillion tonnes a day. Kumar’s argument quoting another paper by MIT Boston and Manipal University, is that even if every human were to convert even 10,000 litres of water each day from the atmosphere, there would still be an enormous excess in the air.
Kumar had originally set a target of 5,000 units for My70, but in close to two years, only a fourth of that has been achieved. Lack of awareness and the fear factor have been factors, notes the founder.
Larger formats have been in the news much earlier — like Eolewater from France, which created wind (and later solar) powered large scale ‘Atmospheric Water Generators’ that could produce a thousand litres per day. A prototype was tested in Abu Dhabi many years later. The adoption of such systems are likely to be higher in places that would otherwise have to turn to expensive desalination.
With groundwater levels likely to reduce further in key cities, smaller units could well come into homes and offices.
Any concern on purity is addressed by the team by testing the water produced at the nearest accredited laboratory, after a day’s run. Tests are based on WHO and ISO standards on 48 parameters to determine potability.
On economy, Kumar cites some simple math. A family of four consumes 7,200 litres for drinking, cleaning vegetables and cooking, he estimates, in a year. At Rs. 40 for a 20 litre can, it spends Rs. 14,400. A more expensive brand costing Rs. 80 per can would make that double. It’s not too far from the entry point for a My70 bubble top, which is Rs.35,000 (not including the 18 per cent GST that currently applies).
“You can recoup the entire capital in a year and a half or two years. The machine is going to last 10 years. And if you have solar power, the cost comes down further. So it is the perfect solution. But we have to educate the market,” he underlines.
He recognises that there is a need to tell the story compellingly and a strategy is being worked out on that front. Once the marketing piece is figured out for My70, he is open to funding that has been offered several times in the past. IIM Kolkata has suggested several CEOs who could run the business, something that the ‘techie’ in Kumar would be happy to hand over. Conversations are on, and he is hopeful of a match in wavelength soon.
A My70 Experience Centre at Electronics City, Bengaluru.
On the issue of GST, Kumar notes that the players need to approach the government for help. He has already spoken with some senior officials with the request to consider concession for drinking water.
For now the My70 range sells in the South, with outlets in Bengaluru and Chennai. The brand is able to provide its service network in these locations.
Staying Social
None of that has stopped the social entrepreneur from expanding the reach of his creations. He has set up an independent unit in Ariyalur in Tamil Nadu, 200 metres from the railway station. The funds came from Rajinikanth’s fan club members and the general public, who collectively gave close to Rs. 3 lakh. A local cinema owner Karthik initiated the process; both he and Kumar chipped in too, to meet the total cost of Rs.3.75 lakh.
“Despite selling bottled water in his own cinema, he wanted to provide water to the public. He collected money and also donated himself. It has solar panels, so there is no electricity cost. Everyday, local people consume 100 litres of water from it. It’s not CSR — every individual contributed,” says Kumar, betraying a tinge of excitement.
In Uttaramerur of Kancheepuram district, a school that did not have access to water was identified and five machines have been installed, giving 100 litres per day. This was sponsored by GMAC (which runs the GMAT entrance exam).
There are many such examples, but Kumar does not believe in counting these numbers as they are done purely as charity; often at cost or at a discount from Elbow Engineers.
Kumar is also in talks Water Aid. On the cards is a unit funded by the NGO that will be tested for a year. If that works, the body intends to replicate it across India.
“That is when it will become a proper service. I will get the money to sustain, but not as a business. People will benefit from it. Water Aid would have achieved their objective. That’s the long term. I also have a business,
I have a team, so to survive so I am selling commercially. Every member of my team makes an incentive on sales. They are motivated to sell. But my happiness will come from doing this for social benefit,” he surmises.
It is in giving that the social entrepreneur finds his peace.
(This article appeared in the March 2020 issue of Stimulus Unplugged. The same month, Elbow Water Generators fully merged with AeroNero and the My70 range will now sell under the MyTeerthaa brand.)