Sathirakudi is a small village, some 30 km from the Tamil Nadu coast. In Indian culture, if you visit any house as a guest the first thing you get offered is a glass of water. But not in this village. This village gets scanty rainfall and groundwater has really high salt content. Its unsafe for consumption even after multiple filtrations. Such is the case with many villages and small towns in India and the world. Women and children, especially young girls, have to walk miles just to gather enough water, including drinking water for everyday use. It is estimated that worldwide, women and girls spend close to 200 million hours — daily — collecting water. 

Uravu Labs: I co-founded Uravu Labs in 2017 to solve problems around access to clean and safe drinking water in water-stressed areas in India and the world. A change was needed in how we source, distribute and perceive water. So we looked into a component of the water cycle which is abundantly available all around us - the water vapor in the air. Water vapor is sufficient for satisfying the needs of the entire human population for a year.

EVA Aquapanels: Owing to the challenge we are building a solar device, an “aquapanel”, to harness water vapor from the air and make safe and clean drinking water easily accessible to everyone. And it’s a completely solar-powered device, an integrated panel which doesn’t need any input of water nor any input of energy from the grid. Its 100% off-grid. It works by utilizing a solid material with high-affinity for water and uses abundant solar thermal energy to drive the process.

Our journey has been very rewarding and we are much closer to realize our product. Along the journey, we have been recipients of multiple awards:

Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge: The Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge is a worldwide renowned science & technology startup competition designed specifically to address the needs of deeptech entrepreneurs across several different industries and technologies. The Challenge provides a platform for promising research and projects, providing equity-free prize money as well as other funding opportunities, global visibility and connections with key players in the deeptech innovation network.

Uravu Labs has been recently selected as Hello Tomorrow Global Finalists for the world-renowned #HTChallenge! From 4,500 applications, we are one of the 7 Finalists in the Food, Agriculture and Environment track pitching at the summit in Paris on March 14-15th, 2019.