: While the Jan Lokpal Bill from the India Against Corruption movement continues to do rounds in Parliament and Arvind Kejriwal has become the Delhi Chief Minister, there is a group of three people who carved out something totally unexpected from the Anna Hazare-led protests. As their throats ran dry from being out on the streets for hours in the scorching sun, an idea struck Jatin Ahlawat and his two friends – to provide cheap and clean drinking water to people.
And that’s how “Pi-Lo”, a start-up which offers chilled mineral water to people for as less as Rs. 2 was born. Now, Pi-Lo mobile water vending machines are available at 80 locations across 28 metro stations in Delhi-NCR. “So far, this is the only mobile water vending machine which has made a network of this extent in Northern India. The big companies in the mineral water sector are eating away profits of up to even 400 per cent, whereas the cost of their water itself is just about 20-30 paise per bottle. On top of that, they use plastic bottles. Besides, people no longer have faith in the cheap water carts, most of which run illegally while they claim of being MCD-approved,” said Jatin Ahlawat, co-founder and director at Abhyudaya Automations Private Limited which runs the start-up. The company began operations with just four metro stations in June last year.
“The initiative is free of plastic, a paper glass with 250 ml of capacity is provided for drinking water, while for 1 litre one has to bring his own bottle. We began with metro stations because there is no proper provision for drinking water at the stations,” said Mr. Ahlawat, who is an engineer.
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The start-up found a unique way to build their mobile water ATMs. It bought e-rickshaws and fixed the box-like vending machines on them. Each vehicle carries about 500 litres of water and from its survey on installations at 21 metro stations, the company found it was selling anywhere between 12,000 and 14,000 litres of water per day.
“Our plant and systems are BIS-passed. The machines are fully automatic and will display water TDS, temperature, etc., using sensors. Before filling the water ATMs, the water is tested on a daily basis,” said Vikas Mallik, co-founder of the company.