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by IANS |
New Delhi, Jan 11 (IANS) Union Minister of State for Science and Technology, Jitendra Singh, on Tuesday launched an Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven startup by IIT alumni for water purification using innovative technology.
The facility aims to provide clean drinking water at a price much lesser than the market price.
Speaking on the occasion, the Minister said, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven start-up initiative should be motivating for the other startups as well.
An MoU was also signed between the Technology Development Board (TDB), a statutory body of Department of Science & Technology and Swajal Water Private Limited, a tech start up company founded by ex-IITians based in Gurugram.
The company is focused on innovative technologies to make reliable clean drinking water accessible to communities at affordable price, for their project on IoT enabled point of use solar water purification unit for slums, villages and high utility areas.
Welcoming the financial support extended to Swajal by the TDB, Singh said that his Ministry is committed to reach out to the potential small and viable start-ups having skill and talent pool, but lacking resources.
The Minister asked the CEO and co-founder of Swajal, Vibha Tripathi to scale up this technology to help achieve India's ambitious target of providing clean drinking water to all by 2024, as envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"Apart from the Centre's initiatives like National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) and Jal Jeevan Mission, private sector should come forward in a big way with state of the art tech solutions to cover nearly 14 crore households where clean drinking water is yet to reach," Singh said.
Referring to Prime Minister's 75th Independence Day speech, where he said that in just two years of the Jal Jeevan Mission, more than four and a half crore families have started getting water from taps.
The minister said: "Ministry of Science and Technology is positively contributing to Prime Minister Modi's vision and mission of 'Har Ghar Nal Se Jal'. The Gurugram based company's patented system, 'Clairvoyant' uses artificial intelligence to optimise purification systems and predict future breakdowns.
These rural water ATMs by Swajal proposed to use solar energy to pump water from rivers, wells, ponds or groundwater depending upon the location.
The water will then be treated with appropriate technology to make it healthy and pure for drinking. With this innovation, the cost of purified water can be brought down to as low as 25 paise per litre.
