Thinking outside the box

“At a young age, my dream was to become a doctor. Only because, as any other typical Singaporean student, I was trained in the mind frame to either be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. So what eventually happened was that I ended up selecting one of them. Which led me to join Red Cross at the age of 10.

But things changed as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome spread across Singapore in 2003. Many doctors gave up their lives for their patients and seeing that I knew that my heart wasn’t ready for such a calling. Looking deep into myself, I got to understand that I was picking a medical career just because it sounded prestigious.

I took a step back and pondered over my choices, identifying my strengths and the kind of activities that fulfilled me. The conclusion I drew was that I truly enjoyed organising activities. As part of Red Cross, I was put in charge of organising events, camps, and gatherings. I liked how I could build an organisation from scratch and make it flourish. On the other side, I realised that I was doing a great job. So, next thing I did was to set for myself a path into the business world. I enrolled inthe Business School of the National University of Singapore with a clear goal in mind: to start my own business.”

“I had my own tech venture in the third year of university, which eventually failed. After this experience and a stint in financial services, I felt that I should be a contributor to society. I wanted to become part of a business that benefits people.

But I didn’t know where to start. An email from the Public Utility Board of Singapore (PUB) cleared it up for me. They were looking for entrepreneurs, working professionals, and students to join their HydroPreneur programme, which was designed to move water technologies from lab to marketplace.

With that invitation, I was offered the chance to meet people who were willing to make a difference. There was a lot of PhD talk and most of it was beyond my comprehension. But there was also a team there that was doing water filtration for rural communities and I thought to myself, ‘this is actually something I want to be part of.’ It was a perfect match.”

“As a team of three, we embarked on the Hydropreneur programme and started what was to become WateROAM — a water innovation enterprise dedicated to developing water filtration solutions.

By the time the programme ended, we were ready for the first test deployments to Indonesia and Cambodia, whereas one of my co-founders took the initiative to transport the system to Indonesia. Since portability was a critical design criterion, little did we know back then that carrying a 40kg system would cause injuries. And we learned the hard way. My co-founder suffered a slipped disc and had to undergo surgery.

That unfortunate event led us to design and build a downsized version of the system. And so, we came up with a bag that weighed no more than 300 grams, fitted easily into a backpack and resembled any other plastic bag, with the only difference being that its integrated ceramic-based membrane filtered out dirt and bacteria from the water. We called it Fieldtrate Lite.”

“During the next few months after the redesign, various natural catastrophes hit Asia-Pacific. Rains caused severe flooding in Malaysia. Cyclone Pam completely devastated the islands of Vanuatu. And a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal. Providing safe drinking water in those areas was among the biggest problems faced by disaster relief crews and we jumped into help.

We partnered with different NGOs such as Relief Singapore, Red Cross and later World Vision to make a difference. The system we provided was easy to transport, simple to use, affordable, didn’t require any electricity and most importantly, it could save lives.

Without noticing, we became a front-page story, attracting the attention of international media outlets. While it was flattering to have our work recognised, it also made us realise that we needed to do more.

Besides helping people in disaster-affected areas, we wanted to widen our impact to communities that are affected by the lack of safe drinking water on a daily basis.”

“Trying to understand what systems would best serve rural areas, we relocated to Malaysia for a period of time. The idea was to find answers to simple questions like, ‘how do people in remote areas get water?’, ‘who gets sick?’, ‘why do they get sick?’.

Different communities have different ways of addressing water challenges. Some of them dig wells which are muddy and create the perfect conditions for bacteria to thrive. Others take water from the nearby rivers or streams, which are often polluted. And not many have the privilege to enjoy spring water, which is a lot cleaner compared to river water. However, spring water is not easily accessible and often involves a long journey on foot.

We combined those findings with five key principles of design to ensure that our next product meets the daily water needs of those people. As a result, the new filtration system was built to a) provide good water quality; b) be simple enough for people without a technical background to use; c) be lightweight and portable because many villages are located in areas that are very difficult to access; d) be durable as to withstand harsh operating conditions and e) be affordable.”

“As a social enterprise, our bottom line has both social and economic dimensions. Besides creating social impact, we must be economically sustainable. Which means that we must be profit-driven. Even if at this moment our main buyers are NGOs, we place a high importance on producing market-oriented products that end-customers are willing to pay for.

In Cambodia, for instance, people lack both water and electricity supply. About half of the population has access to electricity but only 20% of them enjoy the privilege of pipeline water supply. As a consequence, they are drinking from open water sources such as wells, rivers or other water streams. This has a direct impact on their health. Most of the time, those people are sick and cannot be productive. Because of that, they are stuck in poverty.

It might sound easy, but it is not as straightforward. A mindset change is needed in the first place. People fail to see the connection between them feeling weak and drinking unsafe water. It is not until we or one of our NGO partners steps in that they see this correlation and are willing to make changes.”

“The United Nations recognised us as their Representative for Water and Sanitation in their mission to achieve the sustainable development goals. While we appreciate this recognition, there is still a lot of work to be done.

We want to move towards a micro-entrepreneurship model, where an individual in the local community would become a water entrepreneur. That person would carry the responsibility to manage a water system and sell clean water to his neighbours.

We also plan to penetrate into Cambodia, the Philippines, and Myanmar, these countries having the greatest needs to access clean water.

And more than that, we want to showcase that a social enterprise in the water field can be successful across social and economic dimensions. By doing so, we hope that the rest of the world would hop on this bandwagon to provide clean water to those in need.”

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