How DrinkWell Is Solving Bangladesh's Arsenic Water Crisis Through Water ATMs
What is the problem?
The World Health Organization has called Bangladesh’s arsenic water crisis the largest mass poisoning of a population in human history. Between 20 and 45 million people in Bangladesh drink arsenic-contaminated water every day.
In the 1970s and 1980s, aid organizations drilled millions of tube wells across the country to provide rural Bangladeshis with an alternative to bacteria-contaminated surface water that caused cholera and other diarrheal diseases.
But in the 1990s, millions of villagers began developing serious skin diseases, respiratory problems, and internal cancers. Ironically, the same wells meant to protect them from certain death now supplied water contaminated with natural arsenic leached from sediments beneath the delta.
This issue isn't limited to villages. In Dhaka, for example, research by Transparency International Bangladesh in 2019 found that 51.5% of the city's population receives contaminated water from Dhaka WASA, a state-owned company. Approximately 4 million people living in Dhaka's slums lack legal access to water. Collectively, boiling water costs $3.9 million a day, just for the gas to boil water they suspect is unsafe.
What is the solution?
DrinkWell technology removes arsenic, fluoride, and iron from water before supplying it to consumers. DrinkWell uses innovative water filtration technology that relies on its patented HIX-Nano (Hybrid Ion Exchange) nanotechnology, which binds heavy metals in water and removes them without wasting water. One resin set lasts 10 years and extracts 99% of the water it filters.
DrinkWell uses the technology in two key ways. First, Water ATMs are community-based kiosks that provide purified water around the clock via prepaid smart cards, affordably priced at about 40 paise per liter.
Second, utility companies integrate HIX-Nano filtration into the city’s water infrastructure, making piped water safe to drink for millions of homes.
What is the business model?
DrinkWell operates as a for-profit social enterprise using a public-private partnership model. In Bangladesh, DrinkWell collaborates with the Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (WASA), Chittagong WASA, Khulna WASA, and Narayanganj City Corporation through public-private partnerships. The utility provides the land and connections, while DrinkWell supplies the equipment and manages the Water ATMs.
People pay for the water they consume, and the utility receives improved service delivery. DrinkWell generates income from per-liter revenue and system installation fees.
In India, DrinkWell wins government bids and provides utility-scale piped systems, including the world’s largest piped water treatment system for arsenic and iron removal in West Bengal.
Additional revenue comes from partnerships with international donors and multilaterals, including the Asian Development Bank, UNICEF, and USAID's Feed the Future program. This strategy allows DrinkWell to serve low-income communities at affordable prices while remaining commercially sustainable.
How is it structured and funded?
Minhaj Chowdhury founded DrinkWell in 2013. Chowdhury is a Bangladeshi American who grew up in America, attended Johns Hopkins, and then returned to Bangladesh as a Fulbright Scholar. Chowdhury worked for five years with BRAC, the world's largest NGO, on arsenic mitigation before founding DrinkWell with Dr. Arup SenGupta and Mike German of Lehigh University.
Why is it innovative?
DrinkWell's product innovation is powered by HIX-Nano resin. What sets it apart from other water purification technologies is its ability to remove arsenic and fluoride from water without producing hazardous waste, along with its 10-year lifespan, which makes the economics work.
However, business innovation matters just as much. Water is a public resource meant to be provided by the government, yet many companies have failed to build sustainable business models around it.
DrinkWell does not compete with the utility–it works with the utility. It does not sell bottles of water; instead, it provides access to one liter at a time throughout the day, at approximately one-tenth the price of bottled water.
Moreover, rather than charging the poorest people the full cost of water, it leverages cross-subsidy arrangements with donors and utilities to provide free water to ultra-poor homes.
For example, DrinkWell’s UNICEF-funded installation in the village of Khulna delivers free water to 100 ultra-poor families and provides water at market prices to 2,785 more low-income families.
What is the impact?
Based on DrinkWell's own reporting and third-party sources:
Deployed over 700 water treatment plants globally
Serves more than 3 million people daily and 100 million by 2030
Operates 290+ Water ATM booths in Dhaka alone
Sold approximately 349 million liters of water in Dhaka in 2022, up from 34 million liters in 2018
Provides the world's largest piped arsenic and iron removal water system, deployed in West Bengal, India
What needs to improve?
DrinkWell faces three main challenges.
First, willingness to pay. USAID's Feed the Future partnership in Faridpur found that, despite water pollution in the area, people sometimes hesitated to pay for prepaid ATM cards. To create demand for a public service, community mobilization and marketing are required, and these initiatives cost money.
Second, dependence on utility and government collaborations. DrinkWell's development in Bangladesh largely depends on collaboration with water authorities. If political priorities shift or an alternative solution wins a bid, DrinkWell could be excluded from markets it took years to enter.
The third element is the capital required to achieve its goal of serving 100 million people by 2030. Deploying 700 plants took DrinkWell a decade. Scaling 40 times within five years would require a massive increase in capital, manpower, and installation capacity. Whether the impact investing and infrastructure finance ecosystem is prepared to underwrite that kind of growth for a water company is genuinely uncertain.
Sources:
Drinkwell-Solve MIT
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