Tata New World’s most Affordable Water Purifier

After releasing the world’s cheapest car, Chairman of Tata Group Mr. Ratan Tata has ventured on a new way, which looks to offer world’s most affordable water purifier soon.

Rs. 100 crore over the next 5 years that’s what the Tata Group’s new motto – making the world’s most affordable water purifier- will disclose the cost later. The group is betting on volumes within very thin margins to make its latest product- Tata Swatch i.e. a success. In next 5 years, the group objective is to make safe and secure drinking water available and non expensive to 3 million households all across the country.

Along with spending Rs. 100 crore in manufacturing these purifiers, the company will also heavily spend on advertisements and marketing. To reach the consumers market, the group will tie up with non government organizations. By the end of year, the product will be rolled out in 3 states i.e. West Bengal, Maharashtra and Karnataka. In addition, it will have a pan-India presence by June 2010.

The managing director of Tata Chemicals Mr. R Mukundan commenced, “The way we view a competition is more like partners. We do not want to call them competitors because we believe there is a huge unaddressed market. Rather than pit one against another, we should focus on expanding the market. Our view is that there is enough water there which needs to be purified which all of us can go and do our job. We would want to work with everybody else. If somebody has a better idea to do it, we would like to partner with them.”

Tata Swatch gets after years of collaboration between Tata companies such as TCS, Tata Chemicals, and Titan. To make it efficient, the nano technology is based upon low cost natural ingredients like husk, rice and ash. Mukundan added by saying that, “We found a technology which was lying in TCS. TCS then partnered with Tata Chemicals to look at marrying nano technology with rice, husk, and ash and has worked out well for this product. Everybody knew the benefits of rice, husk, ash and everybody also knew the benefits of nano technology. It is just that these two were not put together in a format which could be then commercialized.”

Tata Group has already constructed a plant in Haldia with a capacity of 1 million units, having the potential to scale this capacity by another 1 million units in 3 months. At 2 price quotes, the product will be available i.e. one at Rs. 749 and other at Rs. 999. Besides this, the company stated that the product will mean a family of five that can get drinking water for as little as Rs. 30 per month.

Category: Technology News