Andy
When Rahul Pathak decided to quit his engineering studies in 1993 and start marketing water purifiers, he imagined it would be akin to any other ordinary business. But today, his company Aquaplus Water Purifiers (Pvt) Ltd is reaching the remotest corners of not just India, but also the world, with timely intervention after natural disasters, and providing millions of people with safe drinking water.
This Pune-based entrepreneur’s innovation can purify 7,000 litres of water in 10 hours without using electricity. It can clean water using gravity, a hand pump, or a fuel-driven motor, depending on the availability of resources.
Rahul’s first project was the 2005 Jammu-Kashmir earthquake, where he donated some purifiers to the Army, who found his innovation highly useful. This caught the attention of Registered Engineers for Disaster Relief (REDR), a group of engineering professionals who volunteer for relief efforts. From then on, the filters were added to the list of disaster relief items.
