Runs office and mall cooling towers on their own reused water, paid on savings
TL;DR Sumpwright cuts the fresh water that cooling towers in Indian offices, malls and hospitals consume. It meters what goes in and out, runs the tower at higher concentration, and feeds it treated sewage water and air-conditioning condensate from the same building. Owners pay a share of measured savings.
Large Indian buildings with water-cooled chillers lose water all day through evaporation and blowdown. India's energy-efficiency bureau notes that such chillers need a constant supply of treated makeup water, and that local authorities insist on treated sewage water for it, which needs further treatment before use[1]. In practice many buildings still top up with borewell or tanker water when their sewage plant output is poor.
Most towers run well below their potential. A US federal guide says many systems run at two to four cycles of concentration, and that going from three to six cuts makeup water by 20% and blowdown by half[2].
So why does nobody fix it? Nobody on site measures it, because few towers have meters on both lines.
The seed pitched an integrated platform for every water stream in a building. I reframed it. Greywater, rainwater and society metering are covered elsewhere, and a platform for everything has no clear buyer. The cooling tower is the single largest controllable use in a commercial building, and it has one owner - facilities.
Sumpwright installs flow meters on makeup and blowdown, a conductivity controller, and a small polishing step for the building's treated sewage water. It pipes air-handler condensate, which is low in minerals and peaks on the hottest days[2], into the tower basin. A dashboard shows fresh water used per tonne of cooling each day. Monthly Legionella tests are part of the service, because reusing water in a tower raises that risk and India has no rule requiring checks[3].
Sumpwright doesn't tune chillers for energy, since partners in this directory do that. It sells water, that's it.
The user is the facilities manager. The payer is the building owner or the operator of an office park, mall or hospital. Today they pay a chemical-treatment vendor a monthly fee plus water and tanker bills. Sumpwright charges a fixed monthly fee to cover monitoring and testing, plus a share of fresh water saved against a metered baseline. I found no public benchmark for these contracts in India.
The 2023 district cooling guidelines from India's energy bureau put treated sewage water at the centre of cooling-tower makeup[1]. Water-stressed cities keep tightening groundwater use, and tenants now ask for water figures in sustainability reports. Cheap flow meters and cellular loggers make metering every tower affordable.
No public figure exists for water used by Indian commercial cooling towers. The closest Indian estimate is adjacent - a UNEP study cited by the energy bureau says full district-cooling deployment could save about 78,850 million litres by 2037-38[1]. The narrowest signal is the 20% makeup cut that higher cycles deliver[2], applied to each tower a client owns.
Water-treatment chemical companies, including the big global ones, sell automated cooling-water control and talk about water savings, but publish no figures[4]. Indian treatment vendors usually sell chemicals by the drum. Chillsteady, also in this directory, tunes chiller plants for energy. The gap is an independent operator paid on fresh water saved, with the testing that makes reuse safe.
| Difficulty | Moderate (45/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹60 L–1.2 Cr |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The hardware is standard. Water chemistry is the hard bit, because treated sewage water varies day to day and scale or corrosion can damage very expensive chillers. Getting owners to accept a performance contract is the other one, and running monthly site visits and lab tests across a city takes real discipline.
No licence is needed to run a cooling-water service, but the building's own consents set your limits.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI decide water is safe from Legionella or set chemical doses alone. Lab tests and a trained operator make those calls.
Want to work out the AI layer for Sumpwright? Talk to Yash →
I'd back a founder from water treatment or facilities management with real chemistry depth. If you see it as a dashboard business then please don't, because the chillers won't forgive you. Before raising money, prove on three towers that fresh makeup water falls by at least 25% over a summer with no rise in scaling or bacterial counts.
Plan for roughly ₹60 L–1.2 Cr, mostly for meters, controllers, polishing units and the first sites you fund on shared savings.
No licence for the service itself. Reuse must stay within the building's Pollution Control Board consent, and you should run Legionella sampling even though no rule requires it.
Yes, especially in water-short hot cities. Some countries have strict Legionella rules, so check those before you sell.
The free Sumpwright validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the water and safety checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for facility managers and owners, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Sumpwright or something close to it? The make-or-break work is proving savings without putting a client's chillers or occupants at risk, and I'm happy to help you design that pilot. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.