StartUp Circle: How does SmarterHomes helps you track water usage through an app and IoT Meter?

SmarterHomes: An average Indian household, living in an apartment, with a family of four, consumes about 800 litres of water every day. An urban family only needs 135 litres per head per day without compromising the quality of life. This comes up to 540 litres for a family. Therefore, it's proven that most families waste roughly 35-40% of water. The first step towards conserving water is to measure consumption. Knowing how much water you use is the first essential step towards saving water. For example, did you know that an unnoticeable leaking flush can waste up to 400 litres in a day?

Smarterhomes, a Bangalore based utility automation startup has designed an IoT water meter ‘WaterOn’ that measures water consumption in real-time. It simply means that, if you have a smart water meter at home, the moment you switch on your tap, every drop of water is monitored. So, CIOL talked about the smart water-saving methodology with the founders. Here is an excerpt of the interview.

1. Please tell us about the idea and how it works?

India has over 15 million apartment units in 55 cities. Most residents pay a quarterly maintenance fee, based on the square foot area of their home. You may be surprised to know that of this, nearly 40-50% goes towards the water and the energy needed to pump it. Irrespective of the individual water usage of the residents, the bill is divided among the number of flats. Thus the true cost of water is not known to the consumers. This leaves no incentive for water conservation due to a lack of accountability. This issue can be easily addressed by introducing smart water meters in each apartment.

Smarterhomes’ WaterOn is a 100% automated smart water meter that offers accurate metering, leak prevention (detection and control) and long life. It’s the only end-to-end solution providing real-time readings to the consumers to help them prevent wastage and save money.

WaterOn has three main functions

• Measure:  WaterOns use positive displacement technology that makes them not only accurate even for very small quantities but also retains accuracy for a very long time as compared to conventional jet type water meters. It can be installed in any orientation, horizontal, vertical, at an angle or even upside down making them friendly for tough to install locations. In high rise apartment complexes, each water inlet is fixed with a WaterOn smart water meter. The meters connect each other in a network ensuring the real-time, loss-free transmission of data to the cloud application.

• Monitor: The connected meters send consumption data in real-time to the central analytical and billing engine. The platform accessible from the internet and smartphones allows users to view their water consumption and also detect any abnormal consumption. The users can view per inlet consumption, historical or average consumption or even make comparisons with their neighbours which encourages them to reduce wastage.

• Control: In the event of a leakage or an abnormal consumption, the device will alert the user on the phone and the user can close it remotely with the help of an app.

2. How did you come up with the idea?

Most housing complexes do not meter the water consumption of residents individually. Instead, the residents are charged a fixed flat rate. Even though the water consumption is different for each household, the bill is calculated by dividing the number of households by the total amount. The individual consumptions are never equal which results in most residents paying for others' consumption as well. This makes people insensitive towards water wastage in their homes. As neighbours in an apartment complex, my co-founder Kasturi Rangan and I experienced the pain of inaccurate water billing process and the lack of water metering. To address this problem, we started Smarterhomes in 2014 intending to empower individual users to measure, monitor and control their water consumption in real-time.

3. Tell us about the journey and the team at SmarterHomes.

We started Smarterhomes in 2014 to address a problem that we faced first hand. After spending a considerable amount of time on research, we decided to launch an automated water meter for high rise apartments. In 2015, our smart meters were certified at FCRI ( Fluid Control Research Institute of India) in Palakkad.

SmarterHomes has installed 85,000+ meters to date. We are currently functional in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.

4. Can you explain the process about how you save water?

The first step towards conserving water is to measure consumption. Knowing how much water you use is the first essential step towards saving water. From accidental leaks to utter negligence, there are many ways in which we waste the water.

WaterOn water meters come in various variants for different applications. The meters connect with a special purpose cable. It manages data transmission and powers the devices for real-time operations. It can store approximately 45 days of consumption records in its local storage. Meters count each consumption and at the end of it, send the data to the cloud server through Nuclious. The Nuclious and meters are powered by solar power pack making them completely isolated from building resources. The platform, in turn, manages the data for billing purposes. The comprehensive dashboard allows the customers to see their supply and consumption statistics, their averages, lowest and highest consumptions and also comparisons with others.

So, you go and check them?

Meters are installed at each water inlet in an apartment. Once installed there’s no need to go to them and take readings even though they have a physical counter. WaterOn has sensors, it generates real-time data and allows consumers to take decisive actions such as shutting off the water supply in the event of a leak. The most significant advantage is that when people look at their consumption data, they start taking conscious steps to optimise their consumption and bring in water and cost savings. We also have WiFi, LoRaand GSM-based meters for individual homeowners allowing them to measure the water consumption in real-time and also prevent damages to their property due to a leak.

Unlike a normal water meter, a smart water meter like WaterOn can measure consumption at a metering point and communicate to the central data servers in real-time. It not only helps in recording consumption accurately but it also monitors water infrastructure in real-time. The detailed consumption information helps the consumers alter their behaviour to bring in savings. Analysis of our customer data proves that apartment communities that have implemented individual metering have reduced their overall water consumption by 35%.

5. How are you raising awareness about the product?

We work closely with Resident Welfare Associations to build awareness about the need for water metering. We also tell them the benefits of the same.  People prefer to respond to a crisis instead of being proactive in solving their problems. You will be surprised to know that 100% of our customer base or people whom we meet is open to adopting technology to solve their problems. Most people, especially in urban centres, are aware of the advantages technology can offer in making life easier. We saw that getting a notification of an active leak in their home and the ability to shut off the water supply, people see that very positively.

6. What has been your business growth till now?

We have been growing by over 100% YoY in the last 3 years. In FY 2018-19, we signed up ~12,000 meters and in FY 19-20, we signed up ~55,000 units. We were planning to reach 100,000 units milestone in this year but it looks difficult due to the ongoing Covid19 crisis.

7. What are your plans?

We are expanding our geographical reach and initiating presence in NCR region and Tier 2 and 3 cities. We remain SEC agnostic as water is a fundamental need and it doesn’t discriminate. Also, we are expanding our product portfolio to have NBIoT and LoRa variants. This is so that we can engage in larger rollouts with the help of telecom carriers and utilities. The NBIoT and LoRa variants will also help us in reinitiating our European and African presence.

Funding

SmarterHomes has raised equity investments ~$5 million from Macquarie Bank, UK.