Where’s My Water?
You might mistake that for a popular Disney app featuring a lovable crocodile character, but it is a lot more than that. NextDrop, the brain child of Anu Sridharan is a paid subscription service (it costs the equivalent of $0.16 a month) which allows subscribers in Indian cities to know when their water supply will be coming. The subscribers receive a text message about an hour before to know when to turn on their taps.
Water scarcity is one of the harsh realities of the world we live in. Millions of the world’s poorest people live on less than five gallons of water daily. 46% of people on earth do not have piped water in their homes and for those that do continuous water supply is not guaranteed. This includes places like South Asia, where more than 90 percent of cities don’t have continuous water supply. NextDrop gets utility companies to use water-tracking software, and then transmit delivery information to its subscribers.
The company now has 15,000 subscribers in two cities, Hubli and Bangalore, and hopes to to expand to serve the state of Karnataka, or some 61 million people, before the end of 2014
