Drinkwell is a technology-driven social enterprise that powers water infrastructure. Organizations of every size - from small NGOs to public utilities - use our technology to treat water and maintain assets.

Our systems-based approach involves three steps: (1) we select organizations who have the social capital and business acumen to provide safe drinking water in their communities; (2) build low-cost, high-efficiency water filtration systems entrepreneurs operate as sustainable enterprises; and (3) service systems by providing critical support around maintenance, financial management, and quality assurance ensuring long-term success.

Drinkwell’s technology has been developed with backing from the US State Department & India Department of Science and Technology, certified by the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research of the Government of India, implemented in the field with in-country partners such as Dhaka WASA, Bangladesh Department of Public Health Engineering, the West Bengal & Bihar Public Health Engineering Departments as well as organizations such as the Tata Trusts, Unilever & the US Agency for International Development. Drinkwell is backed by prominent investors such as Danone Communities, Global Innovation Fund, and TPG Rise Fund, and has been covered by the BBC, Forbes, CNN, and many others.

Within the United States, our company and technology has been recognized by the National Academy of Engineering, US Chamber of Commerce, US Department of State, US Environmental Protection Agency and leading academic institutions as a leading innovator in the environmental technology space. Globally, our technology has been used across the most challenging environments across Asia improving hundreds of thousands of lives on a daily basis. 

Brief History

Over the past decade, the SenGupta Research Lab of Lehigh University has partnered with Bengal Engineering and Science University in Bengal, India, and Water for People in Denver, Colorado to install 200 community-based wellhead arsenic removal units in remote villages in West Bengal, India.  These systems supply nearly 200,000 villagers with arsenic-safe water. Each village manages the system through a local community-based committee and have been running successfully for several years.

In 2008, the Tagore-SenGupta Foundation was formed to introduce the technology using an innovative school-based business model. The work revealed the enormous potential for scaling a micro-franchise model that spurs entrepreneurship at the individual level, clean water access at the household level, and economic growth and global health improvement at the community level. 

Throughout this process, the technology has won countless awards (for a full list of honors and awards please visit the Technology Milestones section).

Drinkwell was established in May 2013 as a part of WIST, Inc., to capitalize on the lessons learned of the over 200 implementations and provide clean drinking water to rural and peri-urban communities that lack access to affordable sources of clean drinking water.