Drinkwell: Clean Water ATMs Solving Bangladesh's Arsenic Crisis

The Problem

The WHO estimates that the arsenic water crisis affects over 200 million people across 70 countries and is the largest mass poisoning in human history. In Bangladesh alone, an estimated 20 to 45 million people are at risk of being exposed to arsenic in their drinking water. The crisis is painfully ironic: many of the wells in Bangladesh were drilled by the West as a solution to its water scarcity, but arsenic is a colorless, odorless, naturally occurring metal that, when ingested, can lead to illness, diarrhea, and a cancer-causing disease called arsenicosis.

Boys drinking from an arsenic well in Southern Dhaka, Bangladesh

In urban areas, the problem compounds, as customers often pay higher prices for water from informal middlemen who deliver it in unhygienic containers, and the collected water must be boiled before consumption, a task that falls disproportionately on women and girls.

The Solution

In 2017, Drinkwell partnered with Dhaka WASA to provide safe, affordable drinking water at 80 paisa per liter, 18x cheaper than packaged water alternatives. The model operates on a 50/50 cost-share: Dhaka WASA provides the land, shed, electricity, and water line, while Drinkwell provides filtration equipment, ATM dispensers, and smartphones at no cost to the utility. Once the Water ATM Booth is installed, end users collect safe water through prepaid smart cards, and this revenue helps offset operating costs. The underlying technology is proprietary: Drinkwell uses "HIX" (Hybrid Ion Exchange), a nanotechnology-based resin platform that consistently removes arsenic and fluoride from challenging water sources. Critically, the patented technology lasts 10 years, recovers 99% of water, is 16x more energy-efficient than conventional reverse osmosis solutions, and has been retrofitted onto existing water infrastructure.

Drinkwell Water ATM

The Impact

Since 2015, Drinkwell has deployed 300 Water ATMs, creating more than 430 jobs for people in Bangladesh and bringing almost 200 million gallons of clean water to low-income communities in Dhaka, enough drinking water for more than 700,000 people a year.

Growth has been dramatic: in 2018, with 59 ATM booths, Drinkwell sold 34 million liters of water, while in 2022, with 250 ATM booths, they sold nearly 350 million liters, roughly a 10x increase in volume. Third-party research has documented a reported 90% improvement in health outcomes for end users. The ambition is even larger: CEO Minhaj Chowdhury aims to provide safe water to 100 million people by 2030.

People lining up to collect water from Drinkwell Pump

Why It's Innovative

Three things set Drinkwell apart.

1) The first is its partnership model: rather than competing with public utilities, Drinkwell works with them, providing filtration technology and Water ATM Booths at no cost to the utility, then operating and maintaining them as a service, with a revenue share based on end-user payments. This avoids duplicate infrastructure and earns government buy-in.

2) The second is the data layer: Drinkwell provides utilities with data on end-user activity at each dispensing point, including gender-disaggregated information on water consumption patterns and payments, which can directly improve public service delivery.

3) The third is the technology: a resource-efficient approach in a way that conventional approaches are not, since reverse osmosis wastes up to 50% of input water, whereas Drinkwell's resin-based system recovers 99%.

Women collecting and carrying Drinkwell jugs

What Needs to Improve

The scale of reach is still limited relative to the problem. Serving hundreds of thousands is meaningful, but the arsenic crisis touches tens of millions in Bangladesh alone, and reaching truly remote or rural populations has proved harder than urban rollout.

Drinkwell tried and struggled with community-based rural models early on, finding it difficult for women entrepreneurs to secure loans to run local water businesses, and that structural barrier still exists. The model also depends on utility partnerships, which means expansion speed is tied to government procurement timelines and bureaucratic processes, limiting how fast the company can move.

Operationally, Drinkwell stated that gross margins could double once proper IT upgrades are implemented to enable unmanned ATM Booths, but they remain dependent on human caretakers at each site, adding cost and management complexity.

Finally, last-mile delivery remains unsolved: customers still have to carry water home, and Drinkwell has acknowledged that people are willing to pay more for doorstep delivery, but offering that service would require regulatory certification and daily water testing, a significant operational leap the company has not yet taken.

Sources: https://www.envirotech-online.com/news/groundwater-monitoring/111/international-environmental-technology/bangladesh-arsenic-groundwater-quality/65438 https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/01/18/half-of-bangladeshi-drinking-water-is-polluted-with-arsenic-and-climate-change-is-making-i https://www.thedailystar.net/news/drinkwell-ceo-minhaj-recognised-davos-safe-water-mission-4087136 https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/the-business-of-impact-in-a-changing-world/ https://www.tbsnews.net/features/panorama/drinkwell-quenching-thirst-clean-water-592294