How Smart Technology is Revolutionizing Wastewater Management
Transforming wastewater management isn't just about technology; it's about orchestrating a symphony of insights, collaboration, and action to secure a sustainable future for our most precious resource: water.
The global water crisis is more pressing than ever, with 75% to 80% of the world's wastewater going untreated. This shocking statistic contributes to water scarcity and poses significant environmental and health risks. As urbanization accelerates and climate change intensifies, finding innovative solutions to manage and recycle wastewater has become crucial.
In this episode of Liquid Assets, host Ravi Kurani sits down with Mansi Jain, CEO of DigitalPaani, to explore groundbreaking approaches to wastewater management. Mansi shares her journey from a passion for sustainability to developing cutting-edge technology aimed at revolutionizing wastewater treatment operations. She explains how DigitalPaani is tackling the overlooked problem of defunct wastewater infrastructure, which is key to addressing water scarcity.
Listeners will gain insights into the challenges of decentralized versus centralized wastewater systems and how DigitalPaani is using advanced automation and real-time monitoring to transform operations, and processes that are transferable. The episode how these solutions are being scaled to impact not only small facilities but larger municipal systems as well, potentially reshaping the future of water management in rapidly urbanizing areas.
What you'll hear in this episode:
- The shocking reality of global wastewater treatment and its impact on water scarcity
- How DigitalPaani is using technology to revive defunct wastewater infrastructure
- The challenges and opportunities in decentralized vs. centralized wastewater systems
- Insights into DigitalPaani's innovative approach to wastewater treatment automation
- The importance of holistic operations management in wastewater treatment
- How these solutions are being scaled to impact both small and large-scale facilities
Listen On:
- Spotify
- Apple Podcast
Watch the interview:
Meet Jain
Mansi Jain is the visionary CEO of DigitalPaani, a pioneering company dedicated to transforming wastewater management through innovative technology. With a strong passion for sustainability, Mansi returned to India after her undergraduate studies in the U.S. and quickly recognized the urgent need for effective water solutions in her home country. Under her leadership, DigitalPaani is focused on driving operational excellence and addressing the critical challenges faced in managing wastewater assets, aiming to create a cleaner and more sustainable environment for future generations.
Mansi's journey is marked by her commitment to community building and her love for history, which she believes are essential components of sustainable development. She has previously spearheaded initiatives that connect local communities with their cultural heritage, emphasizing the importance of storytelling in fostering engagement and awareness. With a unique blend of technical expertise and a deep understanding of social dynamics, Mansi is dedicated to making a lasting impact in the field of water management, ensuring that access to clean water becomes a reality for all.
The Book, Movie, or Show
"Radical Markets," a thought-provoking book that Mansi Jain passionately recommends in our conversation. This compelling read challenges conventional economic paradigms and presents innovative ideas that aim to create a more equitable society.
Jain highlights how the book's unique approach encourages readers to rethink traditional market structures and consider new ways to address pressing social issues.
Transcript
00:00
Ravi Kurani
Welcome to Liquid Assets. I'm your host Ravi Kurani. Liquid Assets is a podcast where we talk about the intersection of business, policy and technology, all as it looks at water.
00:11
Ravi Kurani
Did you know that 75% to 80% of the world's wastewater goes untreated, leading to a global water crisis that's more pressing than ever? That's why in today's episode of Liquid Assets, we're diving into this critical issue with Mansi Jain, the CEO of DigitalPaani. I'm your host, Ravi Kurani. Mansi takes us through her journey from a passion for sustainability to developing cutting edge technology aimed at revolutionizing wastewater management. We discussed the shocking reality that most wastewater infrastructure is either non existent or defunct, and why this overlooked problem is key to addressing water scarcity. Mansi explains the challenges of decentralized versus centralized systems, revealing how digital Pawnee is using advanced automation and real time monitoring to transform operations and bring plants back to life. We also explore how these solutions are being scaled to impact not only small facilities, but larger municipal systems as well.
01:11
Ravi Kurani
If you care about the future of water technology or sustainability, this episode is packed with insights you wont want to miss. Lets dive in.
01:22
Ravi Kurani
Today we have an awesome guest for you, tuning in all the way from India.
01:25
Mansi Jain
Hi, my name is Mansi and I'm the CEO of DigitalPaani, where we're working to drive operational excellence in managing wastewater assets through our technology.
01:34
Ravi Kurani
Bhansi, how are you doing today?
01:36
Mansi Jain
Good, yeah. First time on a podcast, so that's exciting.
01:40
Ravi Kurani
Awesome. We were having a really engaging discussion before I hit the record button, and it was around your philosophy on why you started Digitalpani and your guys thoughts around wastewater. Why don't you just go ahead and unpack that for us? Tell us the story of what is your philosophy, what's the problems in wastewater and why did you start DigitalPaani?
01:59
Mansi Jain
Yeah, so I guess going way back, I've always been pretty passionate about sustainability and specifically how it relates to urban environments because everyone is moving to cities. If you look at India, which is where I'm from, most of the built environment that's going to exist five years down the line doesn't even exist right now. That's the sort of pace of construction and urbanization we're dealing with. And I feel like we're just not equipped right now to actually be able to make that sort of transition into urban environments because we don't know how to manage our core infrastructure in terms of waste water and so on. And it ties hugely into macro challenges. We're facing as well in terms of climate change and so on.
02:39
Mansi Jain
So I think I was always really interested in these topics, how are we going to manage our lives in relation to sustainability as we urbanize? And so that spotlighted a lot of issues around water and waste and so on. And I think a couple of years ago in particular, I got really interested in water once I came back to India after doing my undergrad in the us and realized that it's just a huge problem here and everywhere, really, because across the world right now, almost 2 billion people don't have access to enough clean water. And I read this article, actually, that said that 90% of the effects of climate change directly or indirectly, will reflect through shortages of water.
03:18
Mansi Jain
And so then that sort of prompted the whole question, okay, if water scarcity is going to be a major challenge, and it already is, how do we actually go about solving it? That's where the whole conversation began. And so to me, it's been a sort of very first principles approach to thinking about what is a way to tackle this. And in my mind, there's only a couple of them, really. We have desalination. There's new technologies coming out which can suck moisture out of the air, but they're very new. We have rainwater harvesting and so on. But I think what really stuck out to me was recycling. It's the most obvious solution, in a way. And I was pretty shocked to learn that most of the water in the world is not treated right now.
03:57
Mansi Jain
Most of the wastewater, I mean, and it's actually the only source of water which is locally available everywhere because it's literally being generated at the points of human consumption. It's renewable, which is. You can't say that really for most sources of water. And it's an amazing resource which is very underutilized. So that how we came to this, it began from urbanization. It went to water. It went to then, okay. Wastewater seems to be the most, like, important lever in our hands to actually make an impact. And then we got to, okay, what do we do about wastewater? So it's a long sort of chain of thinking through why we do what we do, which has got us here.
04:36
Ravi Kurani
I want to pause just for a quick second and take a step back. You mentioned that most of wastewater is not treated. I feel like in the US, we have this flush and forget mentality, right? People turn on the tap, they see the water come through, they flush their toilets. They don't really know where it goes. And part of why I wanted to start this podcast was also to ask the dumb questions of what really is happening with our water. So can you explain, just from end to end, what happens to wastewater? Maybe in, like, the US as an example, and then maybe as India, if they are different, but what's not being treated? What's happening to the wastewater? Are we just throwing it into lakes, rivers, streams? What does that look like?
05:16
Mansi Jain
Yeah, I mean, essentially 75, 80% of the world's wastewater is not treated. Now, that can be for two different reasons. One reason is you don't have the infrastructure to treat it. So there's just no treatment plant where the water is going, which means, yes, it's like draining being drained off somewhere directly into land, lakes, rivers, whatever it is. The second reason, actually, is that despite having infrastructure, the infrastructure is not working or. And so it's not effectively being treated. Maybe the water is passing through some sort of treatment plant. Maybe it's entering, but actually being bypassed from there itself into the drain lines. So that's the second reason why it doesn't actually work. So, yeah, and yes, very much it goes into water bodies and land then.
06:03
Mansi Jain
And that's why if you see, I don't know about the us, but if you see india, there are lots of very prominent rivers like the Amuna and so on, you see photos of them and there's a lot of, like, forming and pollution very evident in them. And it's all coming from wastewater from surrounding industries and so on.
06:20
Ravi Kurani
And when you talk about wastewater, what is the input? Is this like human wastewater, people flushing toilets? Is it industrial? And depending on the vertical, what's the pie chart of what percentage breaks down in terms of what is wastewater?
06:35
Mansi Jain
I'm talking about both. So there's human wastewater, which can either be treated in smaller scale decentralized sewage treatment plants, or it can be larger scale municipal setups. And then there's also industrial, where you have industrial outputs and, like, manufacturing discharges and so on being released. Human waste is the bulk of the waste. But in terms of, for example, toxicity, organic loads and so on, industrial waste is what's really problematic because there's a lot more variation in terms of how. What the parameters are in that water and in terms of what's the distribution of treatment plants, it can look very different in different places. So if I talk about, say, the indian context, it's actually predominantly industrial treatment plants. There's around 90,000 treatment plants in the country and 65,000 are industrial. So it's very decentralized.
07:26
Mansi Jain
Every factory has to treat its own waste and in fact, even for human waste, in a lot of emerging markets across Asia and so on, each building actually has to treat its own wastewater. So that's why there's so many units. And on the other hand, of course, if you look at a market like us, the centralized, the human waste is going into these centralized treatment plants. Industrial regulations are much more mixed. Some of them have to do some pretreatment themselves and then they discharge it to a central facility or some of them, the central facility doesn't have any more capacity, so then they have to do treatment themselves. There's a lot more variation in how things are happening.
08:03
Ravi Kurani
Really interesting. That's actually a great distinction for the audience to understand, too, is that in particular, the US is very centralized in its nature around managing wastewater. However, like you just mentioned, India and a lot of emerging economies on top of that. Like you said, our infrastructure is going to look very different in five years than it does today. You have this compounding effect of if you require these factories to do on site wastewater management, you end up having this kind of much larger decentralization issue. So I want to go back to your story. Right. You started off as.
08:40
Mansi Jain
I just wanted to add one or two notes on what you said. I mean, I think this has been the trend so far, but the trend towards decentralization is being seen everywhere. I mean, in the US as well. We're seeing San Francisco make a huge push. I've heard of lots of cases of individual cities or counties saying, you know what? Our centralized treatment plan is full. If you want to operate an industry here, you're going to have to manage that yourself. We don't have space for more load. So there are all these things happening which is going to push more and more decentralized treatment and decentralization centralization. They all both present their own challenges. When you have decentralization, you have the challenge of how do you have expertise at each of these nodes? How do you have monitoring at each of these nodes?
09:24
Mansi Jain
How do you. Yeah, I have strong management for such a technical process when it's so spread out. On the other hand, when you're centralized, you have different kinds of problems. How do you transport all this water around? Water is high volume by nature. It costs a lot to build pipelines, especially in emerging markets. It's not even possible because the cities are evolving so fast. If you try to keep building pipelines, pump it all into one place, pump it all back, it's just not going to happen. And so there's a lot of practical limitations also, you see this in the US as well now, where a lot of treatment plants are hitting limits, and then they have to do massive upgrades worth billions and billions of dollars. They don't have the funds, they don't have the space.
10:08
Mansi Jain
And I think, philosophically, the right approach is definitely somewhere between these two. So we'll see what emerges in the future.
10:16
Ravi Kurani
But, yeah, so if we zoom back out to your story, right, you started off with urbanization. You had this interest in water. You started looking at the different technologies, including desalination, etcetera, and then you arrived at this concept of recycling, basically, right? You have this wastewater that's there on premise, on site. How do we use that water and recycle it if 75% to 80% of the water is just being dumped? Proves a pretty big opportunity to be able to bring that back into the supply line. So with that as the end, we have these slew of problems that happens, which there's just not enough capacity. The infrastructure just sometimes is not working, is where we ended the story at. So how does that kind of launch into digital Pawnee, and what are you working on there? How are you solving these problems?
11:01
Mansi Jain
Yeah, with the premise that wastewater treatment is a core thing that we should solve for. If you want to solve the broader water challenge, then obviously the next question is, well, what do we do in wastewater treatment? Is it that we don't have good treatment technologies? Is it that we don't have good design? Where does the problem really lie? And I think what I felt was, and I'll tell you a little bit more about my background. So my co founder in DigitalPaani is actually my dad, Jesh. And he has actually been in sustainability and clean tech for my entire life. Like, literally the day I was born is when he got his first contract. And he has. I mean, he's focused on energy and so on as well, but water has been a major focus area of his for the last ten years, at least.
11:45
Mansi Jain
And so through that, and this was primarily design, engineering, constructing new assets and new infrastructure, treatment plants and so on and so forth. And I think through him also, for many years, I've seen and gotten a little glimpse of what's happening, what's the problem. And during the pandemic, we got to really sit and be together. We're both stuck at home and discuss what's working, what's not working. And the core thing that emerged, to me, at least from all of those, was, look, we have a lot of treatment technologies. We have the conventional methods that we've known for 50, 60 years. There's a lot of innovations also happening for more complex effluents and so on. Also, we know how to design plants. Typically, there's enough standardization in the field where there are these standard manuals and techniques and so on.
12:34
Mansi Jain
So that's not so much where the issue is. The problem is what happens after. So a lot of these facilities are designed. They seem fine on design operations, things start failing. And the reason for that is because, again, we are dealing with a massive decentralization as well, in the context that I began this whole thing. But there's a lack of expertise you can't have in each of these treatment plants, experts sitting and analyzing how much nitrogen has been removed, how much cod degradation has happened, all of that. You have a lack of skilled manpower. You have a lack of visibility as well into what's really going on. And typically, the people that are operating, they don't know the design of the plant, so they don't know how the plant should operate. They just know.
13:19
Mansi Jain
They just be applying their usual heuristics and so on and doing the same operations in each and every plant. And so for a variety of these reasons, what we felt was operations is really where there's a major gap and a lack of focus. It's a huge headache. Even if we look at the companies that build and construct treatment plants that have to take on, let's say, five or ten year operations contracts, they don't want to do it. It's just like an obligation, a headache for everyone. And so we saw that there's a major opportunity to solve this problem. And ultimately, if the infrastructure is not working, what's the point? Yeah, and as we get even better and better technology, because I think there's a lot of brilliant people working on doing that.
14:01
Mansi Jain
As we build more and more treatment plans, the problem will only get worse if most of them are defunct. I mean, india, for example, 75% are defunct in practice. So that's how we got to, okay, we want to solve the operations problem in water because that's where we see not enough focus. We specifically want to focus on wastewater as our beginning point, because that's the biggest lever to be able to solve the water scarcity problem. And then we want to do it in a scalable way because it won't work to be like, okay, we'll deal with 50 plants or 100 plants. Ultimately, if you want to solve a large scale problem, it has to be through technology, because that's the only way to scale, expertise, information, all of those gaps that we felt are there in current operations.
14:46
Mansi Jain
DigitalPaani is a technology system where the mission is to drive operations excellence in water asset management. And we do that by looking at the whole operations in a very holistic way through our software and through our automation systems. Obviously, that means a lot of different things, and I can unpack that more.
15:05
Ravi Kurani
But, yeah, let's go ahead and actually unpack that. What does that tactically look like when you solve the operations channel challenges at wastewater plants or decentralized wastewater?
15:17
Mansi Jain
The way we see it, there are three pillars to solve the problem. First of all, we need to know what the asset needs. This is a dynamic process. Things do change and the needs of have to be known in order to take the right action. Second step, we have to tell the need to the right stakeholders so that the right people can take the right decisions. Third step, we have to solve the need. So talking about each of those in more detail, know the need means you have to know the infrastructure's design. What is it intended to do if things are working well. So what is the membrane surface area, what is the bioreactor design? All of these things. And we have to know what's happening right now as well. So we have to know the operational parameters.
16:00
Mansi Jain
So whether that's through sensors or through the electrical data or whatever it is, we have to know overall what the asset needs through a combination of design and operations data. Second is telling the need. This is straightforward dashboards reports india. We use WhatsApp a lot to funnel a lot of our information, because that's very integrated into our users day to day workflow. Maybe we'll use emergency calls or crisis management and so on. But ultimately, the point is to get the right message to the right people at the right time. And finally, we have to solve the need. And I think this is where our philosophy is really focused, that we are not trying to only tell people the problems. We actually want to solve operations challenges in these treatment plans and get them working.
16:47
Mansi Jain
And so that's why the way we've designed our whole technology is to be very hands on by nature and to really think critically what is involved in managing the treatment process. How do we actually control all of those parts? Through our technology to drive the end result. When any operation, you have equipment, which is, let's say, your pumps or your mixers, blowers, membranes, whatever it is, you have your people on the ground, your technicians, supervisors, chemists, you have your inventory. So it may be your chemicals or consumables, spare parts, whatever. And finally, you have maintenance and upgradation activities. These are the four basic components of an operation, and all of these need to work in sync with each other and in accordance with the needs of the asset, which we already know because we're capturing that design and operations data.
17:35
Mansi Jain
So what does it mean that they need to work in sync? If the equipment needs a certain thing, let's say it needs certain maintenance, the people need to know they need to do that maintenance. If the people need to dose a certain chemical, they need that chemical. So it needs to be there in stock. If the automation system is failing in some way, the people need to supplement that by taking the action manually. So in this way, everything is synced up to deliver the end result of an operation. And digital planning is essentially enabling all of these components to work in the right way and work together. So let's say, for example, equipment. There we have to automate the equipment, not necessarily 100% automation.
18:11
Mansi Jain
We don't really try for that because it's inherently a domain where you need troubleshooting and you need a service layer. We don't personally think that 100% automation works, but anyway, we automate a lot of the equipment. We have some specific thought processes also on what makes for successful and high quality automation. It should be dynamic, it should have proper feedback loops built in so that even when you're not on site, okay, this is, it's failed, and this is what you needed to correct it. Or for example, if you have any changes in your process or you have any new equipment being added, the operations team should be easily able to modify the automation and include things or subtract things without being dependent on others. So anyway, that's equipment. That's how we as DigitalPaani can manage how the equipment should operate.
19:00
Mansi Jain
So now let's say 80% is automated. You still have a number of manual tasks. There's troubleshooting, and there's a number of routine tasks, maintenance, all of those things that have to be done. So our software actually guides the people on what they need to do, what tasks do they need to do, what sops do they need to follow? If x problem has come up, what is the solution that they can try first, and what are the possible solutions if they're not being able to solve it, escalating it to their supervisor, providing them training modules as well, to actually guide them through if they're nothing clear on what to do. And in fact, we also have a like 24/7 monitoring cell where we monitor all of these things and step in as and when needed so that we actually can drive the end result.
19:43
Mansi Jain
So that's, I think, another small belief of ours. There is a thin service layer which is necessary if we want to drive the end solution rather than just give a tech product and then so on and so forth when it comes to the chemicals. How much should we dose? How much is being dosed in comparison to that? Can we bring those things better in sync? Are we running out of stock for something critical? So on and so forth. So there's a number of different decisions we have to take in an operation. In our view, they all need to work in sync. It can't be like your equipment is automated off on some Scada system. Your people are working on some paper. There's a separate procurement system on essay. Things don't work as smoothly as they should.
20:24
Mansi Jain
So we are trying to bridge that and bring it all together to be the single operating system for a treatment plant. So that maybe was a lot, but yeah, that's how we think about it. What does it really take practically, and how can we use tech to productize a lot of those things?
20:43
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, that makes, I mean, that makes a ton of sense for. I'd like to unpack a few parts of those. So to me, this image of like a conductor for an orchestra comes up, right. You guys have all these people playing different instruments, and you guys are collating everything together with using one sheet of music. If you look at that, can you drive me through a tactical example of what happens? Let's start with a pump breaking, for example, just so the audience can hear and see what is the chain of events? Do you guys have a sensor on this pump? And the sensor is connected via wifi. Is the pump still on the ScaDA system? Have you taken it off the ScadA system? Since you said you used WhatsApp, are people still on SAP?
21:23
Ravi Kurani
Do you pull them off of SAP and have web hooks into WhatsApp? What does that flow look like? If something happens?
21:29
Mansi Jain
Sure. So I like the conductor analogy, by the way. I might use that. Yeah. I mean, I can walk through one or two different examples. So let's take the pump example you talked about. So, first of all, when we onboard, we would input information about the pump into our system. So we'd want to know, let's say the pump curve, the header motor rating, all of those kinds of things, which will give us a sense of how the pump should work, what should the flow rate be, and things like that. Then we'll have to monitor what's actually going on. So let's say there is some sort of sensor. So maybe we have a pressure detector over there. If it's a large treatment plant, it could make sense to have something like vibration to know whether or not the pump is working properly.
22:10
Mansi Jain
And then based on that, and there'll be some preventive flows and maintenance flows independent of any data, like every one week, check all this part or do this activity and so on. So those preventive activities are happening separately. There's a checklist which gets generated during the onboarding itself based on the type of pump I select and all of those things. And people are just, the operators are using their phone, they're taking off those tasks and so on. Now, when a problem comes up through that data, so whether it's pressure or vibration or whatever, or even electrical data from the panel, maybe the pump is tripping, then we have to launch troubleshooting workflows. So maybe the solution is, okay, like there's an electrical fault fix XYz wiring. Maybe the solution is there's some lubrication needed. Maybe the solution is the NRV is choking.
23:03
Mansi Jain
There can be multiple things. And so depending on the nature of the degree of data we have, we might have a high level insight, in which case we'll ask a prompting question to the operation team on the ground, check this and let us know about this. And then if they tell us that, it'll help us self further diagnose and say, okay, it's probably this, try this action. And so the whole flow will go. Now let's say they're not able to do this action, or we see that there's a resolution not happening for a long time, our monitoring team may manually intervene as well. To be like, did you understand, are things clear or not? And if it's not working out still, it'll get escalated.
23:40
Mansi Jain
Well, actually it'll get auto escalated through WhatsApp to their seniors and so on, to be like, look, this issue, it's been open for the last 4 hours now, and as a critical issue, it should have been closed in 3 hours. So now we're letting you know about this. At the end of the day, maybe the head of the plant will get a email summary. These are the list of issues which are currently open. This much time has elapsed. This is the criticality. Please look at it. So this is how maybe like a workflow will go. If I talk about, let's say a little more complex of an example, say the biological process, there's a lot there, right? Like there's a lot of complexity there. And so there we go. From. The approach is the same.
24:20
Mansi Jain
We begin with, what's the bioreactor design during onboarding itself? Based on that, a lot of things will get auto generated. Sops, maintenance protocols, things like that. Those things are being followed in steady state. But now, based on the data, there's something unusual that's happened. So let's say your dissolved oxygen levels are not okay. Let's say your sludge is not settling fast enough. Let's say your. I don't know, like, wasting is very irregular. The sludge wasting patterns are very irregular. Based on that, we will say, hey, this is the problem. Now, depending on what type of problem it is, it could be that we actually directly to the automation system. So we could say, increase sludge recirculation. The sludge recirculation pump happens to be automated. It can be done directly without human involvement.
25:07
Mansi Jain
If, however, it is, cannot be done automatically, then it will go in the form of a human task or a human suggestion to say, do this, and then follow the same sort of workflow.
25:16
Ravi Kurani
Got it. And the question that comes up for me right now is, the setup of this system seems enormous, right? There are so many different loops. Like, what does the onboarding customer experience look like when you go into a wastewater facility? Like you said, there's so many complexities, so many limits, so many parameters, so many things you need to measure. Some are automated, some are not. How does the onboarding look like?
25:41
Mansi Jain
Yeah, so I think there's two very different experiences. One is when the plant is all manual. Second is when they have an existing, let's say, scatter system. The software is designed to be very easy to configure. And once you do, you just go in with, like, a tablet and things. And let's say you just put your plant in place. You're, like, dragging and dropping. This is the flow of the treatment plant based on. And I have to answer some questions along the way about the design and so on. Based on that, a lot of things will get auto created. Okay, this is a list of alerts which are linked to this unit operation. Let's say it's an ultra filtration system. This is a link of standard sops. This is. All of these things get pre linked, and then you can just edit and modify.
26:26
Mansi Jain
You will also obviously, want to sit with your customer while doing that. They'll have their existing operations protocols and so on. They'll want to see what you created, or they'll want to give their own to feed in or edit and so on. So that's pretty seamless. I would say if it's fully manual, there's no sensors either. We have an automation instrumentation team that goes and installs them, and then the rest of the things are pretty standard from there. Installer, microcontroller, take the data, software configuration happens the way I described, and it's fairly seamless. Of course, if they have an existing SCADA system, then we have to integrate with that as well. So we need access and APIs and things like that. That elongates the process a little bit.
27:11
Mansi Jain
But overall the software is designed to be very specific to water and so it's all cut up already into unit operations and all these sub components and all, which would then link to a lot of different information rather than feeding everything manually.
27:27
Ravi Kurani
Got it. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And when we look at the kind of execution of where digital pony is today, where are you guys at as a company? Have you deployed these systems? Are you still in prototype phase? What does the world look like today?
27:41
Mansi Jain
Yeah, no, we have deployed this system with many customers now. So we have over 40 customers, over 40 facilities, more accurately around 45 now. And yeah, I think some of them are still in the deployment process because some of them are greenfield projects. So then it takes time to actually have the plan be ready for us. But I would say we have about 30 which are live and have been. Our oldest one is now cross two and a half years, three years almost. That's when we began. So yeah, we've been doing it. Of course the scope is changing. We began with. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Oh, I was just saying that the scope is changing. We began with decentralized sewage treatment plants, which are all domestic waste and small scale. Then we branched off into taking on industrial processes as well.
28:29
Mansi Jain
And then we're now dealing with larger treatment plants. So municipal scale, both in terms of only domestic sewage, but also in terms of mixed industrial effluent. So definitely the scope and lots is happening on the product. We already have a stable product which many customers are using and finding value in, but there's still a lot ahead. So there's a lot of active development which will continue, I think, for the next foreseeable future, at least the next one and half, two years for this product.
29:00
Ravi Kurani
And what does your sales process or sales cycle look like when you're targeting these kind of smaller plants and the larger plants? Obviously your customer demographic is very different. Do you have like a sales team on the floor? Do you have a, do you have this network to your dad already? What does it look like?
29:16
Mansi Jain
Yeah. So, actually, we just hired two sales people today. That's exciting. So, as of today, we now have the three people in the sales team besides the two of us founders, which is really exciting.
29:29
Ravi Kurani
Awesome. Congratulations.
29:31
Mansi Jain
Sorry, I don't remember your second question.
29:33
Ravi Kurani
The second question was a process. Where do you get these?
29:36
Mansi Jain
Right? Yeah. I mean, so we know our customer Persona. So we're focused on buildings and industries within industries as well. We have some specific sub segments that we really focus on. We focus on certain geographies as well. So in that way, we've cut up our customer target customers within those. We know our Personas as well. We're targeting sustainability heads. We're targeting operations heads, engineering heads, and plant managers themselves. We typically do a lot of cold outfits. Like, we'll use LinkedIn to do that. We'll attend conferences and events, and that's pretty effective to meet people. Those are probably the two dominant channels. And now I would say we have a fair bit of inbound and repeat orders from our customers and so on as well. Now the wheel has started churning a little bit on its own. Yeah.
30:23
Mansi Jain
And for larger treatment plants, I guess our strategy is not to work so much directly with government, but more to work with larger private players that are doing operations there. And, yes, it does look different. Of course, the interests of those companies are very different, because they're actually a partner rather than selling to the end customer the way we do for buildings and factories. So, yeah, the dynamics change significantly over there.
30:48
Ravi Kurani
I want to pull two things off your history that's interesting. When I was skimming through your LinkedIn, which seems very relevant to you doing the project? And I want, the question that I'm about to ask is, how did these two experiences would seem very similar in my head, build themselves to what you do at digital Pawnee? The first is the diamonds in the dust project, which sounds really interesting of how you were able to take indian monuments and actually show those to villagers and people. And then the second is obviously the heritage hike. Right. Which kind of seemed very similar in nature, but a little different than water, but, like, how. Tell me the story of that. And more importantly, how does that kind of relate to digital Pawnee? And it can also not. That's totally fine as well.
31:32
Mansi Jain
I have a lot of interests. I just like a lot of things. And sustainability is, like, I think the way I see my life, there's, like, two, three. There's two things that I'm going to be working on for the rest of my life. One is climate and sustainability. Second is community building. This was actually a whole separate branch. Not so how much I'll be dabbling with that in the future, but I do love it. I love architecture. I love history. And I think in general, in high school, there was a theme of preservation flowing for me. There was historical preservation, and then there was natural preservation. Sustainability. Yeah, I think historical preservation. I just felt sad that we have so much around us and we know very little about it.
32:14
Mansi Jain
I mean, Delhi has 1300 monuments, and I would say the average person who lives here has probably visited Ted. And our history education also doesn't really. It's not very interactive. People don't enjoy learning history, which I think is sad. I love history. So I really wanted to work on solving some of those challenges back then. Diamonds in the dust was back in the 11th grade. I think it was a much more kind of hands on, activist project, I would say, where we picked up one specific area, which was, let's say, an hour from where I live, where there's a lot of forgotten monuments, and it's like a forgotten sleepy town. And the idea was started, revive those monuments, build more knowledge and interest in them, and use that overall as, like, a cultural convening point.
33:01
Mansi Jain
So it links back to this theme of community that I was talking about, that I was seeing these monuments as a way to convene. And, yeah, it was much more hands on. So it was like were doing all these plays in that town. We were trying to create all these, like, brochures and all because there was no information. So were, like, reading up all these history books and figuring out what people should know about these monuments when they come there. So it was a sort of attempt to be like, what does a holistic program look like to revive these places and make them a place of convening? Heritage hike was very different, in a way. So heritage hike was much more. Actually, perhaps, Carlos, the idea was, heritage hike was, how do we scale this physical thing that we've been doing?
33:42
Mansi Jain
So heritage hike was much more around building educational content. So we would build all these. We would focus on a particular period in time or a particular dynasty or whatever. We would build animated videos on their policies and interesting things and so on. And then we do virtual walkthroughs through the monuments built by them, and we try to work with schools to integrate it into the syllabus. So, in a way, it was like trying to pick the lessons from diamonds in the dust and do something which we considered more scalable and, you know, at that time, I didn't know it, but looking back, like, there are thousands and thousands of views on these videos, like, till date, I get comments, there's like over 60,000 views one of the videos.
34:25
Mansi Jain
And, yeah, so I guess it did demonstrate that it had that potential, though, was abandoned early in its journey. But, yeah, so I would say not direct link to DigitalPaani, but there are some common themes in terms of preservation, taking a slightly more tech centric.
34:45
Ravi Kurani
Approach, and so on, which is also interesting to a certain sense because there's an entire storytelling angle there. Right. And I think as part of the sales cycle, as part of your demographic, your marketing towards a particular Persona, and then even solving the needs. Right. Your third pillar of making sure that you're telling the right people at the right time, in a sense, is storytelling. Right. Using WhatsApp is a medium that is much more accepted or easier to use than having some of your own dashboard or something like that. And so that's really interesting when you look at throughlines in people's history. One last question that I actually had before we close this out was, what's it like working with your dad? You're the first founder that I've interviewed, and I know I have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to the podcast.
35:33
Ravi Kurani
What's that like?
35:34
Mansi Jain
It's good. Yeah. I mean, I think we have complementary strengths. It's really nice to work with someone who has your back and your best interests in mind. So many startups fall apart or have problems because of co founder tension or disputes or distrust and so on, especially when stakes get higher. So it's really nice knowing that won't happen and our core interests are aligned. We are in this for the same reasons. And I think at this point in our journey, it definitely took some adjustment. We're coming from different generations, different working styles and so on. But at this point in our journey, we have a good amount of experience with each other. We know each other's strengths and weaknesses, and we've demarcated our roles in a much more clear way and set the right expectations from each other as well.
36:21
Mansi Jain
And it definitely helps to have a team, because now we have a team of almost 30 people, so we're able to delegate, manage all of those things, rather than it just being the two of us and trying to manage the whole show.
36:34
Ravi Kurani
I asked everybody this last question before we close up, and it's, do you have a book, a tv show or a movie that has had a profound impact on the way that you see the world? Or the world of water.
36:48
Mansi Jain
Oh, that's hard. I have a lot of them. I don't know about the world of water, actually, and I don't think I do. But in terms of books or movies that have had a big impact on me, that's so hard. Well, I can think of a few. In terms of a book, I'm thinking about radical markets. It's a very interesting book. Yeah. Talking about, like, how do we achieve a vision of an equal society, but using the market as like a, like, standard economic theory to actually achieve that end goal. So it's like leftist objectives with the market as a driving force. It's very interesting. It's a whole movement right now. So that I think is really interesting. In terms of tv shows, there's a lot.
37:35
Mansi Jain
I mean, one that's coming to mind is the office in a way, because just because, like, they find a way to make very mundane daily things exciting by being playful, by using humorous. And that's something that's very important to me. Like, that's the sort of workplace that I try to cultivate. And that's very much our culture of being a lot more light and playful together. And in general, how I tend to approach interactions, even professionally. So, yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of them, but these are just two coming to my mind right now.
38:09
Ravi Kurani
Awesome. Yeah. We'll pull those out into your show notes. Mansi, thank you so much for joining us today.
38:16
Mansi Jain
Yeah, thanks. Thanks so much, Ravi. Thanks for having me.
38:19
Ravi Kurani
And for all of those of you out there, if you want to listen to liquid assets, you can find us at liquidassets, CC or anywhere else you get your podcasts or on YouTube today.