Getting Water To The World's Poorest

Acumen Fund partners with design firm IDEO on a project called Ripple Effect. Ripple applies a design perspective to address gaps in the local water value chain that serve impoverished communities in the developing world.

From the article:

A number of for-profit and nonprofit companies have emerged in places like India and Kenya to provide the poor with clean, safe water. But these companies still face hurdles in distributing water to households and making sure the water stays clean.

Acumen Fund, a nonprofit global venture fund focused on alleviating poverty, has invested in a handful of water companies in India and became aware of the problems its entrepreneurs were facing. Design firm IDEO partnered with Acumen to work with water entrepreneurs in India and Kenya. They dubbed their project Ripple Effect and secured $2.6 million in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

"The challenge was how do we close the last mile of the journey of water to people's houses—and keep it clean?" says Sangeeta Chowdhry, the Ripple Effect project manager at Acumen Fund.