Growing up in a modest family in India, water security was an urgent issue for Meena Sankaran. With that in mind, after working as an engineer for several years, she founded KETOS in 2015, a San Francisco-based startup with an AI-based platform. It has started commercial deployment of the service in the last four years.
Meena Sankaran in 2022 Unreasonable Change in Cheltenham, UK
“Water security affects how much water we have access to,” she says. How much water you use and the quality of the water are closely related.
We spoke to Sankaran about her company, her mission and what inspired her to start her company.
Tell us why you started your company?
Water is such a precious resource, yet taken for granted. People don’t really think about what happens when they flush the toilet or when water comes out of the faucet. And even in this day and age we have not been able to implement all that technology can do in the water sector. How to be smart about providing safe and sustainable water is one of the last sectors to embrace new technological solutions.
More water, if recycled, can be used more efficiently. If you look at water conservation when you think about water management, water security is the yin and yang.
It is most important to understand that this is a resource that we cannot produce. We must preserve it for future generations. Part of protecting him is protecting him. To do this, you need to know how to control it. And to manage it, you need to be able to measure it. That’s basic. And that’s what we do. We give people the tools to measure and understand what to do and how to manage the water they have.
Who are your customers?
We are bringing robotic materials science, data science and IoT solutions to provide real-time water quality data to industry, farmers, municipal operators to ensure compliance with regulatory agencies and release safe water to the environment. . We are changing behavior to be proactive and reactive.
Industrial customers include, for example, mining companies. With increased demand for lithium, miners around the world are exploring how they use groundwater and what happens to the water that is released. The life cycle of water, recycling water, that’s all important. We can help them reach their sustainability goals—how much they use, how much they reuse, how much they recycle. Can we understand the amount of chemicals they use, how much fertilizer they use?
Irrigation in the cultivation of potatoes. Valladolid, Spain.
Industries require us to use source control, treatment, pre- and post-treatment, and effluent. We measure the water when it’s pumped, when it’s running, and when it’s flowing. Manufacturing Systems Our four systems are located in different locations and our platform can provide them with information about all of that. What are the alarms and anomalies? It helps them do some predictive maintenance, gives them insights into what they can do, historical and forward-looking insights. We can do climate modeling for them. The more data we can integrate, the more intelligent and predictive insights we can provide.
Take a chemical dose. Customers can save 12-15% on their chemical spend every week. This makes a big difference as costs increase. Take a sample today, send it to the lab and wait for seven days. By the time you get the information, it is out of date. If people can’t wait that long, they will invest a lot of money in building a lab at home, which is very labor intensive.
What about agriculture?
Water and food security are closely related. For fams, we work with water-absorbing crops like pistachios and almonds. We control the groundwater. A well is an interesting place. When climate change changes the weather, you start to see how much groundwater decreases, which means that the concentration of water, the composition of the water is changing. And we can tell them, for example, how much nitrates and phosphates are in the water and how much water is going into your food crops. Empowering them with this information will make them more effective. It allows them to grow safer crops and run more sustainable operations.
The home ag customers were also very interesting. They’re testing every 15 minutes and need to know what’s going on with their ingredient concentration because they need to deliver consistent quality flavor to their customers. You can use the information that makes a difference in the environment every day.
How can customers access the data? And what is your business model?
The information can come on your mobile phone or computer. Most operators are on the ground or in the field, so they choose the mobile phone. But many farm executives prefer to look at our web platform, because they see it as a network. It can show them, your 50 sites and which sites are green, which are yellow. What we install on site looks like a large microwave. The robot is in that hardware and it is running continuously. So whatever water flow you want to monitor, you can transfer it to the hardware.
Our business model is not to sell hardware. Our business model is to own, maintain and service hardware. This way we de-risk innovation for our customers. It also helps them want to try more. When they have to buy hardware and send samples, they do less testing because they have to worry about the total cost of ownership. We’re breaking that mentality, don’t check too much because it costs you too much, because we charge a predictable fee. And we’re getting them to think about the architecture they need to work with. You’re thinking about how this will change sustainability in the next 10 years, 50 years. How to integrate all of this so that you can be more data driven and not treat water data like a lab report.
How did you come to find the company?
I grew up in India with a modest upbringing. My father was a chemical factory worker and my mother was a housewife with tutoring. I had probably 14 waterborne illnesses before I was 15, where we lived. And that was not normal. But I was focused on becoming an engineer and helping my family lead a comfortable life. Once I knew they were comfortable, I knew I had to make a change to do something I love. Having worked in enterprise technology for over 15 years, I’ve learned enough to build the confidence to know that I want to build a company that can make a difference and stand up for its culture and what we believe in.
We have received funding for the past five years. We’re venture-backed and we’ve had a combination of impact, pure-tech and technology funds that support us. We’ve raised nearly $40 million in funding and are ready to truly scale globally. It is a strong supporter that helps us measure irrationality. We primarily sell in the US, but we have deployed in Brazil, Peru, Israel, Canada and are looking to deploy to Singapore and Kuwait in the next three to six months.
Today we have 170 million data insights and control approximately 13 billion gallons of water. But this is just scratching the surface of the trillions of gallons of water being discharged into wastewater today. My real vision is to prevent the spread of disease. Can we have enough data to give everyone visibility and democratize our platform around the world? Can we achieve that in the next 10 years? I believe we can.
