Safe Clean Drinking Water
Spring Health is an India based water company that utilizes an innovative point-of-sale purification and distribution model to sell affordable drinking water to low income families. It began operations in Odisha, India and plans to scale across the country in the coming years.
SPRING HEALTH…
- Delivers clean water to over 30,000 households (over 150,000 people) on a daily basis.
- Is operational in over 200 villages in rural Odisha, India.
Provides home delivery of clean water for $0.10 per day. - Utilizes a decentralized hub-and-spoke model to keep operational costs low and enable rapid expansion, in order to solve the Last Mile Distribution problem.
- Utilizes partnerships and incentive-based profit sharing with local village shop owners and entrepreneurs.
- Provides services for up to 1,000 people in each village.
- Utilizes Electro-chlorination technology to purify water.
- Electro-chlorination plants cost $250 to install and are capable of producing enough chlorine to sanitize 80,000L of water per day.
Our Brand
Spring Health’s brand presence centers on aspirational branding of safe clean drinking water, which is key to impacting families in need. Spring Health’s learning culture, design thinking principles and a zero-based design philosophy have ensured that Spring Health continues forward as a learning organization that is agile when faced with adverse situations.
Spring Health provides Incentives to partners encouraging them to expand the reach within their villages. A slab-based incentive system motivates village entrepreneurs to continue expansion and increase revenue.
To establish a grass roots entrepreneur led partnership model that would have Spring Health establish village level small businesses set up water vending kiosks that would deliver water to the homes of customers. The technology chosen was chlorine based kiosks, where a Spring Health business associate transports liquid chlorine generated from common salt solution through electrolysis to sanitize a tank full of water at the kiosk entrepreneurs location.
The business associate treats the water and then waits 45 minutes to test the water to see if its fit for consumption. Spring Health shares a slab based commission with the entrepreneur. The starting commission is 25%, increases to 50% for sales above 1500 litres per day and flips to 75% for sales above 2000 litres, providing kiosk partners to invest in marketing and customer relationships.
This model designed for rapid roll out is supported by a rollout team of 18 can open 25 new kiosks a month. An operations team of 8 business associates reporting to a sales and Marketing officer manage 100 kiosks supported by a hub unit for chlorination kiosks. This was piloted and validated. A new technology of small chlorine dioxide based purification has also been piloted and roll out to 25 locations. Phase 1 has established a network of kiosks on the ground many of which are sustainable at a unit level. We however had a series of natural and manmade disasters that halted both expansion and continued marketing which will be resumed soon. Phase 1 is now ready for expansion.
Real life Families – Customers
Picture of another family – customer
Rabi Narayan Misra is a customer and a regular one at that. He says that before Spring Health there was no real option to Safe drinking water. He and his family used to fetch water from the nearby communal tube well for drinking.
The option of boiling water was too inconvenient. Rabi and his wife were aware of the link between bad water and illness and are convinced that SH water is the safe convenient and sensible option.
Akbar Sahu and Mubarak Sahu are brothers who live adjacent to each other in Garodia Village. Their part of the village pattarpodia Sahi does not get piped water and the open well they used was making the children frequently ill. it was at a SHG group meeting that sales associates from SH made a presentation.
They started buying Spring Health water on the advise of the head of the SHG group.It took a few days to get used to the taste of the water and now all the children drink it too. They have not had an incidence of a stomach related ailment this rainy season and are regular users of SH water.
Entrepreneur
Sahoo runs “”Sahoo Cool Bar””in Tankol village and has several lines of business. The store itself also sells talk time for all the main mobile service providers and sees a steady stream of customers who come for their mobile recharge especially in the evenings. Sahoo is also an education entrepreneur and manages two the public private partnership state education schools in neighboring villages.
Sahoo finds that the Spring Health model adds to his business, his earnings from mobile talk time sales commissions is Rs 40 a day and at 1000 liters a day his earnings from water sales will exceed that. Customers who come to buy water also end up more often that not purchasing something else from his shop.
More importantly it adds to his status as he is meeting a “direly felt need.”
Other Entrepreneurs
Last Mile Distribution
Robust last mile distribution model that can add on revenues from delivery of groceries to products and services meeting critical needs. The model can then also be used to aggregate locally produced goods for local and urban market consumption e.g. handloom fabrics. Carbon Credits as a further revenue generator that increases with expansion and can be used to fund expansion once it crosses a tipping point.
Spring Health’s brand presence centers on aspirational branding of safe clean drinking water, which is key to impacting families in need. Spring Health’s learning culture, design thinking principles and a zero-based design philosophy have ensured that Spring Health continues forward as a learning organization that is agile when faces with adverse situations.
Spring Health provides Incentives to partners encouraging them to expand the reach within their villages. A slab-based incentive system motivates village entrepreneurs to continue expansion and increase revenue.
Blitz Marketing
Through a measured rapid prototyping process Spring Health has developed an effective multi- prong strategy with 5 components.
- Creating a buzz in the community with Auto miking, leaflet distribution and a festive kiosk opening launch.
- Door to door campaigning to every house in the village with flip books and mobile smart phones to onboard customers accompanied by the auto miking.
- Water testing on request to demonstrate the current state of water the families consume with a low-cost petri-dish test kit and an incubator placed in one of the homes with a control sample of Spring Heath water as well. For a skeptical family member being able to see bacteria colonies growing because it is clear water, can be a dramatic moment.
- Immediate delivery of water if the customer is interested.
- Using folk media like ‘jatras’ or folk theatre to convey Spring Health water using dance, music and humor, usually about 100-200 people attend these shows.
Contact us to learn more about how you can participate in our work.