How Robots Are Fixing India’s Broken Water & Sanitation System | Solinas Integrity

Description:

India’s urban water and sanitation systems are under immense strain. With over 50% of treated freshwater lost before reaching consumers and manual scavenging still a common practice, the consequences are visible in daily life: water shortages, contamination, and overflowing drains. In this episode of The Climate Conversations, we explore how Solinas Integrity, a deep‑tech startup incubated at IIT Madras, is tackling these long‑standing issues through robotics and data intelligence. The conversation begins with the staggering scale of Non‑Revenue Water (NRW) and the systemic causes behind it, ranging from infrastructure gaps to poor coordination among civic bodies. Founder Divanshu Kumar shares how a plea from manual scavengers led him and his team to design their first solution: a robotic device that could safely clean manholes and septic tanks. From there, the journey expanded, adding inspection robots that glide through underground pipelines and an AI‑powered dashboard that helps municipalities detect and prevent failures before they occur. 00:00 Introduction to India's Water Crisis 01:15 Understanding Urban Water Management 03:08 Complexity of Underground Infrastructure 04:56 Types of Water Losses 07:30 Septic Tanks and Manual Scavenging 08:54 Solinas' Robotic Solutions 14:00 Digitizing Underground Infrastructure 19:38 Closing Thoughts!