To Sivakumar, Akash Ganga, named after the tributary of the Ganga that provides water to the heavens in Hindu mythology, is more than a company; it is a mission. “I am doing this under a business format because there is no other format to take it to the people,” he says. His start-up team included his nephew T.M. Shyam Sundar, an engineer, and four others. “We taught ourselves,” recalls Sundar. “We conducted around 300 experiments in various ambient conditions.”
By mid-2004, Sivakumar and his team worked out how to make water from air. AGL invested in a modest 3,000 sq. ft manufacturing facility and started rolling out its products. Priced between Rs9,200 (for an 8-litre version) to Rs42,500 (for a 120-litre one), the machines were powered by electricity, and sold through stores that sold consumer durables such as television sets, washing machines and refrigerators. The Akash Ganga machines produced a litre of water at an average cost of Rs0.80 a litre, but, surprisingly, found little success. The company was unable to sell the product as it lacked the resources to market the product on a larger scale.
With money running low—Sivakumar had invested around Rs1 crore of his savings into the venture—AGI had to give up its manufacturing facility and move to a smaller one. It also had to prune its workforce from a peak of 52 in August 2005 to just around six now. Sivakumar is determined to make a success of the company and his perseverance has seen some 400 units of the air-to-water converter being sold until now.
Since the process of converting air to water results in a drop in temperature (one reason why some air conditioners leak water), AGI has pitched its products as a three-in-one as the company terms it: an airconditioner, water creator, and air cleanser.
J. Sivaramakrishnan, a retired State Bank of India (SBI) official residing in Chennai, uses one such which cost him Rs23,500. It produces 20 litres of water a day. “It is the purest thing available. No need to run around for water,” he says. The product isn’t without its failings: during winter, according to Sivaramakrishnan, the humidity drops, resulting in a decrease in output.
AGL is in the process of developing new products that will use alternative energy sources such as wind, sun and methane. And Sivakumar is convinced that his converters will find takers in the defence establishment. He has already sold six units with an installed capacity of 600 litres per day at the headquarters of the 25th batallion of the Madras Regiment on a trial basis, and is in talks to install a 1,000-litre unit. The Indian Army is in the market for converters of this kind and had conducted field trials on products supplied by Air Water Corp., a US multinational. “Our technology is indigenous and we can offer it to the army at a much lower cost,” says Sivakumar.
The water produced by the machines has been tested by SGS India, a third party testing agency, on various parameters such as total dissolved solids, total hardness, acidity and alkalinity, and on all parameters it easily met the requirement for potable water set out by international standard IS 10500-1991, amendment 1 & 2 for water.