Sensus bets big on smart water meters

Kolkata: Sensus, an arm of the US-based Xylem Inc, a leading water technology provider, is gearing up to tap the large Indian market with its smart water metering devices, said Amit Vaidya, Director-India, Strategic Customer Team-EMEA & APAC, Xylem.

Xylem helps customers worldwide to transport, treat, test and efficiently use water in public utility, residential, commercial and agricultural settings with presence in 150 countries.

The company, which sees India as a strategic market and has been investing here for the last five years, is in talks with a number of civic bodies in different cities across the country. It is already collaborating with the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to provide 2,75,000 smart water meters in the first phase over three years. The scale of Pune implementation is large, comparable to anywhere in the world. The project will ensure accurate data on billing, identify customer side leaks, manage their network and help reduce non-revenue water.

A recent NITI Aayog report, that drew data from 24 of the 29 states in India, has predicted that India's water crisis is only going to get worse. Nearly 600 million Indians face high to extreme water stress and about 2 lakh people die every year due to inadequate access to safe water. Also, 21 cities are likely to run out of groundwater by 2020.

Water loss in India is estimated to be 40-50 per cent and Sensus is working towards bringing this down to 15 per cent over next couple of years, said Vaidya.