Interview: AI-integrated solutions for water-users, asset managers needed

Water scarcity issues have plagued India for long. While engineering-led supply-side oriented solutions are being pursued across states, a new breed of entrepreneurs are coming up with nature-based solutions to some of the pressing challenges.

New Delhi-based NatureDots is one such start-up, albeit it has managed to bring in a robust component of artificial intelligence (AI) to its soluions portfolio.

NatureDots is using AI and Machine Learning and combines them with natural intelligence, which it says users like fisheries or water asset managers can use to intelligible gather data to monitor their water resources.

Recently, HCL and UpLink (a World Economic Forum platform) have come together to support start-ups like NatureDots in the nascent area of freshwater conservation and innovation.

“HCL Group has been actively working in the sustainability space for many years now. We realized that one of the key aspects that is not getting enough attention is water across the globe. Given this, we decided to partner with UpLink, the innovation platform from the World Economic Forum to support water focussed entrepreneurs or Aquapreneurs through a $15 million grant over the next five years”, said HCL Corporation President (Strategy) Sundar Mahalingam.

“We recieved over 450 applications in response to our first year’s Global Freshwater Challenge. An expert committee followed by a jury sifted through each of the applications to identify the most impactful startups already working in the space of water innovation with potential to scale and replicate across regions”, he said.

Founded by Mohammad Aatish Khan and Snehal Verma, NatureDots claims it is tackling the pain points of 15 million inland freshwater fish farmers who are reeling under acute stress due to the combined effect of deteriorating water bodies, lack of water data, climate risks, unscientific practices, incurring economic losses and facing the nutritional insecurity.

Its flagship product – AquaNurch – combines the power of ‘Nature + DeepTech’, de-risks freshwater fisheries and water managers from ecological stressors. It ensures high revenue with ease to fish farmers/water managers, focused health monitoring of water bodies and specific nature-based solutions, and achieving healthy water and healthy protein for all.

In an interview with India Water Review, Snehal Verma talks about the company’s freshwater solution-oriented initiatives and how it is impacting communities.

What is the idea behind NatureDots? How does the combination of nature- and AI-based solutions work out?

The main idea behind NatureDots is to integrate the natural systems (ecological science lens) with the main-stream water resource management in an inclusive systemic solution. The aim is to move away from a siloed approach to a more holistic approach where the vast complexities of natural systems dynamics are tackled by the use of technology.

NatureDots combined the power of DeepTech tools such as AI, ML, AI-IoT etc., to fill in the gaps on data, information and computation of water-dynamics and overlayed it with the natural climate solutions and nature-based sciences to create a real-time health visualizer and balancer for water-bodies in form of innovation ‘AquaNurch’.

The journey of NatureDots began to address the pain points of inland fresh water fish farmer and biodiversity as a whole, a freshwater river dolphin and an inland fish-farmer face the impact of climate change and deteriorating water bodies. It challenged us to think, how can we create a solution which can help make our water-bodies more resilient. And as Peter Drucker says, what gets measured, gets done!

We found that in India, 15 million freshwater fish farmers are reeling under acute stress due to deteriorating water bodies, lack of water data, and climate risks. The 2.4 Million ha of freshwater bodies for aquaculture (overall 7 Million ha in India) are facing various degree of risks and deterioration, causing 90 per cent of fish production in India biologically unsustainable causing food/protein insecurity; and rapid degradation of freshwater bodies threaten the biodiversity and ecological richness, which is a barrier to new nature economy.

With growing economic growth, we need to rethink the way our existing resources are being managed. AquaNurch AI Engine delivers on water health by combining various data streams, real-time from AquaNurch hard-ware device, and spatial temporal from geo-spatial providers to generate insights on ecosystem health from its roster of customized proprietary models, ranging from local-to watershed-scale levels.

The use of technology and AI-enabled solutions to tackle some of the pressing issues related to water management is not new. How does NatureDots as a company, and its products, stand out in this fast-changing landscape?

NatureDots’ tech-stack is an enabler and the core system hack is our USP of integrating natural systems modelling and usage for water-ecosystem ranging from an acre to 1000+ hectares, across different geographies.

AquaNurch, a hard-tech & deep-tech innovation, which combines nature intelligence and artificial intelligence on waterscapes level where each AquaNurch installation acts as a neural node for capturing the pulse of water-ecosystems on a real-time basis, combines it with AI-engine loaded with ensembled hydrological models, and captures the systemic ecological and anthropogenic disturbances, provides end-to-end solution to fish farmers, and maps the pulse of critical water ecosystems on real time scale.

AquaNurch AI has a capabilities to customized ensembled hydrological models at a hectare level of a selected waterscape, that make us stand out, we collect our high-frequency primary data from virtual and real sensors. The system acts as a Biophysical Chemical Ecological Big Data Factory on the natural system where it is deployed providing Resource Intelligence on a localised, accurate, timely and simplified manner.

Our team then leverages massive data and other information on ecosystem health to navigate and generate customised usable, beneficial insights for different customers and use-cases, providing roster of services. In India, we are delivering solution – alerts, advisories, and insights in 13 languages; Globally, in English via mobile and web dashboard.

What are the various solution-based products that the company offer? Are some of these unique in the Indian ecosystem? Kindly elaborate.

Presently NatureDots offers “AquaNurch System” to inland freshwater fish farmers in India with AI powered camera for disease detection and end-to-end solution to reduce mortality and achieve optimum growth. AquaNurch for water health is offered to our Indian, and global customers including water managers and restoration managers.

We are the first nature-tech start-up to create a systems-integrated solution for water-users and water-resource health not just in India but globally. As first-mover we anticipate that this new-market approach will be a game-changer going-ahead especially as a climate resilience building becomes main-stream. Although the challenges and learning that comes with it need more refining and tackling.

Water touches several stakeholder communities. Which communities are you currently focussed on and what demonstrable benefits have these communities received by connecting with NatureDots in India?

The key focus is on inland freshwater fish-farmers who face the direct burnt of water-security impacts especially water-quality and climate-change further aggravates there problems.

By using AquaNurch system the fish-farmers gain 3x-5x return on their investment with increased production, optimised operations, reduced input costs and de-risked fisheries. From fish seeds, nursery ponds, growing stage, disease monitoring, harvesting and market connect we offer end-to-end complete solution. The system intuitively combines the best science-backed practices for fish-production and complements their traditional knowledge and experience, leading to further integration. AquaNurch acts as a one-stop-shop for the inland freshwater fisheries value-chain.

Data-driven decision-making is still not a prime pursuit with many water utilities and user communities in India. How are you helping create an enabling environment that fosters decision-making based on real-time data and specific user information?

Data-led decision making fails when we over-burden the user with dumping of data and information, which they might be able to internalize or not. Based on our users, whether they’re a fish-farmer or a water-asset manager, a researcher or a fellow concerned citizen we have created simple interfaces for them to utilize the bulk of real-time data and other information.

Technology acts as a visualizer, when the user can see how the actions lead to changes, whether good or bad, they are able to strategize their actions. Also, we all know water-pollution is a problem, but what we don’t know is the extant of that problem, how big it is and what are the main constituents of the pollution.

Without knowing this, it’s difficult for even our user to act on or propose a solution. We observed changes in user-behaviour and perceptions based on our interaction with them.

Tell as about NatureDots and its corporate structure. What is the mandate that the management carries from the early investors?

NatureDots is an independent private limited. It is co-founded by directors, Snehal Verma and Mohammad Aatish Khan. A bootstrapped start-up, it has only raised non-dilutive capital till date, supported by BIRAC, AMRUT 2.0, MSIS, and Climate-KIC.

NatureDots was selected as one of the top 10 Innovators at the HCL-UpLink Global Freshwater challenge 2023, under which we are receiving award of CHF 175,000 as non-dilutive capital from HCL.

Give us an idea of your current customers and how you are reaching out to more communities to drive up your topline/bottom line in the next three years?

We are a customer-facing organization with strong relationships and network capital in place to work with our beach-head market. We have engaged with 1000+ fish-farmers and two water-utilities organizations covering almost 5000 hectares of freshwater resource monitoring, in India and US.

Our team, works closely with fish farmers and water managers to provide full support during initial adoption stage. Building on our relationship, our team has been onboarding commercial and small scale fish farmers by directly reaching out to them and leveraging on our network support.