Rite Water Solutions (India) Pvt. Ltd, which provides potable water and water quality improvement services, has raised €7.5 million (about Rs 65 crore) from impact investment firm Incofin’s Water Access Acceleration Fund (W2AF).
The investment highlights the latent potential in enterprises springing from India's tier 2 cities, said Rite’s managing director and chief executive officer Abhijeet Gaan. “We aim to build a sustainable social venture that not only delivers millions of litres of safe water but does so profitably, creating long-term value for all its stakeholders in the process,” he added.
Incofin launched W2AF in March. The investment vehicle is a first-of-its-kind private equity fund focused on safe drinking water enterprises. The fund will commit €36 million in primarily two geographies: Africa and Asia.
W2AF has raised capital from Danone, BNP Paribas, the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the Danish development finance institution IFU, Norway's Norfund, and the US Agency for International Development.
“We have witnessed an emergence of water enterprises coming up in markets like Africa, India, and other parts of Asia and we are confident that we will be able to expand our outreach, build on sustainable technology interventions for safe drinking water at the ground level,” said Dina Pons, managing partner of Incofin and fund manager, W2AF.
Founded by Vinod Gaan, Rite Water focuses on providing cost-effective and sustainable solutions for safe drinking water to habitations where water sources are chemically and biologically contaminated.
Rite claims to have more than 5,200 water purification plants catering to over 5,100 villages across the country. It treats more than 10 million litres of water per day across 12 states.
The Nagpur-headquartered company works with governments, corporations, and local authorities to extend safe drinking water access. It recently secured a Rs 700 crore ($85 million) order from the Maharashtra government for water treatment plants across 17,500 villages.
Rite also offers solar energy solutions as well as internet-of-things related products in domains like water, agriculture, and energy. Prior to Incofin's investment, Rite raised Rs 10 crore from SIDBI Ventures’ Samriddhi Fund in 2014.
Professional services firm PwC was the exclusive financial advisor to Rite Water for its latest fundraise.
