Watergen, an Israeli drinking water solutions firm, and Hyderabad-based Tata Projects have agreed to an MoU that seeks to address India’s drinking water challenge and envisages domestic manufacture of Watergen units.

Mutual entity

Creating a mutual entity to manage local operations and manufacture Watergen units in India, something that will generate jobs and “fuel economic growth... as well as deploy water grid chain across the country,” is a part of the MoU, Tata Projects said in a release. The MoU, signed in New Delhi on Monday as part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit, will help solve India’s drinking water challenge by providing safe, clean and cost-efficient drinking water, it said.

Observing that Watergen offered low-cost, energy efficient, clean and safe drinking “water from the air”, Tata Projects said the firm’s large scale atmospheric water generators can produce up to 6,000 litres of water from air every day. The medium scale AWG unit produces up to 600 litres.

A pilot programme is to be conducted to utilise the mid-size GEN-350G unit. Watergen had set up the unit in New Delhi’s Connaught Place last year. Watergen’s president Michael Mirilashvili had detailed the firm’s plan to solve India’s water crisis within four to five years to Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad last year. Since then, Indian officials had been working with Watergen to realise this vision.

Tata Projects COO (Quality Service and Water Division) Tenny Cherian said, “As part of our water business unit, which is run as a social business initiative, we are happy to bring this innovative technology to India.”