In the Haizaidi Union district, 20 miles east of Dhaka, the AquAffirm team found themselves surrounded by children — poking their heads into his work — intrigued by the lab work that had something to do with their water supply. What David Sarphie and his team were testing for was the harmful presence of arsenic.

Arsenic is well known as an “invisible problem” because it doesn’t change the taste or color of the water. This makes the danger hard to detect especially in regions where resources are hard to come by. …

Across the country, city councils are passing legislation to promote onsite water reuse, with San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin leading the way. As real estate owners and utilities face these new regulations, Epic’s success proves that the future of water and wastewater infrastructure is already being rebuilt — and it’s resilient, efficient, and pretty epic!

Here, in San Francisco, even during a drought, people don’t need to think about their water supply running out. Thanks to efficient centralized water utilities, households have had 24x7 access to water since 1958 — be it in their sinks, toilets, showers, or faucets.

The Urban Future

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Led by the Water GP in collaboration with Imagine H2O Asia, the Water Technology Access Partnership (WTAP) creates new pathways for utilities in the region to identify, test and deploy innovative solutions that accelerate progress towards SDG 6. Learn about the initiative and how it aims to make innovation relevant and accessible to its utility partners in the Asia-Pacific region.

Access to water innovation is essential in steering us back on track to achieving SDG 6 — universal access to water and sanitation — and can help increase the effectiveness and efficiency of World Bank projects. …

Applications to Imagine H2O Asia’s accelerator and market access program are open!

What is Imagine H2O Asia?

Imagine H2O Asia helps promising water entrepreneurs build and scale solutions across the Asia-Pacific. Harnessing Imagine H2O’s decade of experience supporting 100+ startups, Imagine H2O Asia provides you with the partners, resources and insights to power your success. But we are much more than an accelerator.

From our Singapore hub, we partner alongside you to open new markets for your business in South and Southeast Asia. Our mission is uniquely aligned with your priorities — whether you are new to the region, or already based there. …

What do San Francisco and Chicago have in common? They’re home to organizations focused on ensuring that water technology entrepreneurs succeed. By creating a new water innovation pipeline from the West Coast to the Third Coast, Imagine H2O and Current will work together to support startups leveraging innovation to solve global water challenges.

The goal of this new partnership is to provide entrepreneurs with the opportunities, tools and resources to build strong water businesses and deploy their solutions. …

During the spring 2021 semester, six students from University of Southern California’s Impact Investing Group (IIG) collaborated with Imagine H2O on a consulting project. Their scope of work focused on evaluating how Imagine H2O communicates the impact of the organization, the ecosystem and of the portfolio. They focused on our 2020 Impact Report, our portfolio companies, and recommended a new program to engage Gen-Z.

Following their well-researched and informative presentation, we asked the students to weigh in and share why people should care about water innovation and how to attract young talent to the sector.

• Zoe Hickey Juárez
  Sophomore, Economics…

11 companies from 5 countries selected to participate in our 12th Accelerator Program

Water is at the intersection of economics, health, climate change, and social justice — themes that are particularly top of mind given the events of 2020. For our 2021 cohort, we sought entrepreneurial solutions from around the world addressing safety, access, and efficiency challenges within the water sector.

After 11 years of running the Accelerator program, we know firsthand that entrepreneurship and innovation are key components to solving the global water crisis. Our 150+ startups have raised more than $575 million in early stage investment and have…

Smart Monitoring from Pumps to Pipes

Large-scale, centralized water and wastewater infrastructure struggle to meet the needs of fast-growing populations across the Asia-Pacific. As more informal settlements spring up in Asia’s megacities, utilities aren’t well resourced to expand network coverage. This is because building centralized systems incur high capital costs and are not always economically viable, especially for rural communities that will not be able to generate sufficient revenue. These challenges have led to an alternative approach that is starting to gain ground — decentralized water systems.

Decentralized water systems bring services closer to the customers, are more adaptable to…