HCL securing life's elixir is worthy of emulation

The socially impactful investment by HCL assumes great significance in the wake of the fact that access to water plays a critical role in food production, education, job creation, health and well-being and preserving the natural world. It is equally vital to achieve UN's 2030 sustainability agenda.

It is a development that comes across as a rare, but significant, shifting of gears when a technology company evinces interest and invests in securing fresh water for even future generations.

The $12.3 billion tech giant HCL Group, which has more than 222,000 employees operating across 60 countries, will shell out $15 million over the next five years, to support UpLink, the open innovation platform of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Forum's Global Water Initiative to roll out a series of innovation challenges and create an innovation ecosystem for the global freshwater sector.

This socially impactful investment by HCL assumes great significance in the wake of the fact that access to water plays a critical role in food production, education, job creation, health and well-being and preserving the natural world. It is equally vital to achieve UN's 2030 sustainability agenda. Interestingly, it is projected that the global demand for water will exceed sustainable supply by 40 per cent by 2030, with huge implications for the global economy and society.

"The availability of fresh water is rapidly changing worldwide and in the process creating a tenuous future requiring attention from policy-makers, the private sector and the public to equal proportions. Having seen the efforts of aquapreneurs, who are finding solutions to challenges around existing freshwater resources, I am positive that we are moving in the right direction and which augurs well for the future of our planet," said Roshni Nadar Malhotra, chairperson, HCL Tech.

As a starter, 10 water-focussed entrepreneurs from different parts of the world will share $1.9 million from HCL group to scale their innovations. It is pertinent to mention that threats from climate change, population growth and consumer demands are hovering like the Damocles' Sword. Amid these mounting threats there is a question mark on securing the world's global freshwater ecosystems. It is to address this issue that the Global Freshwater Innovation Challenge was launched last September. It is endeavoured to encourage and promote innovative solutions that could strengthen data-driven decision making, improve freshwater resilience in the face of climate change and restore water quality around the world, maintain HCL's top officials.

The first set of ten aquapreneurs includes two from India. Indra Water (India) is working on electrically driven, decentralized wastewater treatment solution with no added chemicals in its primary treatment. NatureDots Private Ltd's project AquaNurch (India), on its part, is working on de-risking fisheries and water managers from ecological stressors, enabling remote-control and real-time monitoring of aqua-farms.

One must understand that with the combined challenges of ageing infrastructure, growing urban populations and a rapidly changing climate, the conventional approach on managing water is no longer sustainable; rather it is obsoletely ill-conceived.

The WEF believes that with water scarcity threatening all countries, it is essential to identify and empower innovative start-ups that will help secure access to this precious resource, including serving future generations. These innovations are crucial to meet the increasing global demand for clean water and as a means to support the transition to a greener economy.