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Launch HN: NextDrop Technologies (YC S17) – Water Marketplace for Urban India

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Re: Launch HN: NextDrop Technologies (YC S17) – Water Marketplace for Urban India

#41

Post by ada1981 »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #39
anusridharan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great question. Right now we manually take water samples and get it tested in a lab. Over time, as IoT devices get cheaper, we believe the water quality testing will be done at the source, online, and in real time. This makes it much harder to game the system. Additionally, we track the GPS location of the truck with the water to make sure clean water is filled up at the source and the same water is delivere…

What's to stop another truck with bad and cheaper water from coming and filling up the truck that's being tracked? I imagine if the prices are higher, there's a lot of incentive to commit fraud, especially on something as short-lived as a water supply.

Perhaps randomized sampling / testing. You'd want to be a highly rated supplier so as not to compromise future sales.

Re: Launch HN: NextDrop Technologies (YC S17) – Water Marketplace for Urban India

#42

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

Hey Anu & team, congratulations. You're addressing a definite need-gap.

Query:

How do you ensure safety. Do you make your suppliers follow certain safety protocols designed and tested by NextDrop, if so would you be making that public?

Boiled water - We & travellers to our country are constantly advised by experts to drink only boiled water; even when if it's 'purified' by the supplier to remove contaminatents, sub-par packaging results in dangerous contamination. Assuming you have customised dispenser to record data, how to you plan on addressing this need.

Re: Launch HN: NextDrop Technologies (YC S17) – Water Marketplace for Urban India

#43

Post by whocanfly »

Congratulations for the launch, team!

Living in Bangalore, this is one of the biggest challenges I see. We notice the dying lakes and water supply shortages. It would not be wrong to say that a mafia of water tanker operator exists.

A friend from Jaipur mentioned how their city handled this situation better & how Bangalore seems to be struggling despite good rainfall.

The other night we saw a man refilling water cans from an ordinary hose and prayed for the recipients' health.

Are you launching a service or product for domestic users? Shout if you need beta testers.

Re: Launch HN: NextDrop Technologies (YC S17) – Water Marketplace for Urban India

#44

Post by manjuds1 »

Hi, good work, your solving very critical problem which we face in our Bangalore.

But my doubt, is commercial water supply legal?

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/where-do-tanke...

as per this article, an RTI query says, no commercial water supply license issued by BWSSB

Re: Launch HN: NextDrop Technologies (YC S17) – Water Marketplace for Urban India

#45

Post by MarkMc »

> We track the the water from the filling source to the delivery using GPS, giving users confidence they received clean water

I wonder how easy it would be for water suppliers to cheat such a system. Perhaps the supplier will send the GPS device to the clean water source on a motorcycle, and send the water truck to the dirty source. I'd recommend you occasionally sample the consumers water tank and test the quality of the water.

Re: Launch HN: NextDrop Technologies (YC S17) – Water Marketplace for Urban India

#46

Post by navalsaini »

Hello Anu.

Nice to see you here.

My question is - what do companies serving a market far flung from US (as India), get by going to YC. It is indeed a great achievement; but how does it help the company. I can see a direct advantage in being able to hire talent or approach a global pool of investors.

The other I can assume is that it would help going global and aiming to serve other markets. Is that the correct assumption too?

Congrats. Wishing luck.

Re: Launch HN: NextDrop Technologies (YC S17) – Water Marketplace for Urban India

#47

Post by samblr »

anusridharan wrote: post #30
coolswan wrote: post #26

Forgive my ignorance but is there actually enough water in and around India to make up for the shortage, but right now it's just not distributed efficiently? Or after solving for all these inefficiencies, there'd still be a shortage? If so, what are other sources they can leverage down the road?

That's a really good question with a not so straightforward answer. I'll start with some stats. Public water utilities lose 50% of it's water due to leakages. During monsoons, India gets enough rain to fulfill it's drinking water needs (but as you can imagine, it's hard to store that water for the year). As energy gets cheaper and cheaper, technologies like desalination will get more affordable, and pumping water wil…

>> Public water loses 50% of its water due to leakages

Can you please quote source for this.

Re: Launch HN: NextDrop Technologies (YC S17) – Water Marketplace for Urban India

#48

Post by suryaprakki »

anusridharan wrote: post #11
puranjay wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought of this too. Water is a tricky thing to deal in because it isn't like any other resource. When you sell water to someone, are you also depriving water to someone else? This can easily turn into an ethical minefield if you aren't careful.

This is true- and I'll rephrase what you're saying. What are the environmental impacts of groundwater withdrawals? If someone is withdrawing, who else isn't getting water? These are exceedingly tricky issues, and the sad part is that right now, nobody knows the answer because there is no data to answer these important questions. The first step, which we are implementing from day 1, is to use IoT devices to monitor gr…

Aren't the drying bore wells and depleting ground water levels a testimony to that? http://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com/bangalore/others/water...

Re: Launch HN: NextDrop Technologies (YC S17) – Water Marketplace for Urban India

#49

Post by samblr »

MarkMc wrote: post #45

> We track the the water from the filling source to the delivery using GPS, giving users confidence they received clean water I wonder how easy it would be for water suppliers to cheat such a system. Perhaps the supplier will send the GPS device to the clean water source on a motorcycle, and send the water truck to the dirty source. I'd recommend you occasionally sample the consumers water tank and test the quality o…

>> Qualified water suppliers make more money.

This single line shows what NextDrop's malicious intents are underneath snake-oil salesmanship.

Who decides about a qualified water supplier and how ? Im sorry to say this - how is this not snake oil salesmanship ? Water quality is a gargantuan regulatory challenge that no civil body takes easily. The sheer scale of this even in a small city/country is a lot. And NextDrop lay (fake) claims to solve this for India delivering water trucks! Right ok.

From other comment-threads it can be gathered that commercial water supply is already an illegitimate business. So NextDrop wants to make most of this illegal business by helping clients with more gadgets. And they are doing in grand style of selling vision of "Securing India's Future One Drop At A Time" in their landing page. Wow, unbelievable. That reads like a hollywood line - "Securing earth's future one ______ at a time".

The disappointment gets worse when I learn that OP appears to be a bright kid having studied in an institute of repute. https://www.linkedin.com/in/anu-sridharan-b24a016/?ppe=1.

Sometimes solution to even pressing needs as this do not solve the problem - instead they further widen the wounds. NextDrop and likes will stand testimony to these facts.

I see somebody pointing out this to be Uber for Water - uber actually stands for fighting regulatory. NextDrop and likes will stand for aggregating-and-being-a-proxy for web of illegitmate business! Huge difference.

Re: Launch HN: NextDrop Technologies (YC S17) – Water Marketplace for Urban India

#50

Post by chappar »

anusridharan wrote: post #8
scdoshi wrote: post #4

Looks like a really good idea. How do you plan on scaling without becoming part of the water mafia (or at least enabling them)? After all, there are only so many independent suppliers with their own water source. Would love to hear you thoughts on this.

That's a really good point. We've had to think long and hard about this one too. There's one interesting stat that is less known. Aboout 80% of India runs on groundwater, and in cities, we have estimated that about 50% of the people have their own private water source. BUT- less than 1% sell that water. Now imagine we've used devices to aggregate all demand (phase I). Phase II would be to introduce new supply into th…

>>we have estimated that about 50% of the people have their own private water source. BUT- less than 1% sell that water.

I appreciate that you are trying to solve this important issue. I was wondering if individuals selling bore water is legal in India

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