India’s Sanitation Economy is estimated to be a $62 billion market opportunity

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Pune, November 18, 2019: On the occasion of World Toilet Day, Geneva-based Toilet Board Coalition (TBC) hosted the Global Sanitation Economic Summit in Pune, from November 18^th to November 21^st. The summit was a platform for business leaders, investors and sanitation experts, who are at the forefront of the global sanitation economy, to deliberate upon ‘Sanitation Economy’ solutions for various industries, citizens and development agendas. Toilet Board Coalition – The India Chapter, which will go online in January 2020 was also launched at the summit. Introduced as a result of demand from local Indian companies, who would join a global coalition but wanted to have their own coalition in the country, the Chapter will be TBC’s first office outside of Switzerland.

The summit’s inauguration featured eminent keynote speakers including Secretary P. Iyer, Ministry of Water and Sanitation, Government of India; Cheryl Hicks, Executive Director and CEO, Toilet Board Coalition; and Rajendra Jagtap, CEO, Pune Smart City. Other important delegates included representatives from prominentinstitutions such as Tata Trusts, Unilever, Kalyani Group, LIXIL, Kimberly-Clark, Veolia, Firmenich and USAID as well as Indian Smart Cities.

During the panel discussions, leading sector experts touched upon various topics related to sanitation. These include: ‘India leading the way in business innovation & WASH’; How the Sanitation Economy approach becomes a part of mitigating water risk for companies and governments; How the Circular Economy, applied to sanitation, becomes a solution provider for agriculture and consumer goods industries’ and ‘Sanitation solutions for a resource constrained world’.

Speaking at the summit, Cheryl Hicks, CEO and Executive Director, Toilet Board Coalition, said, “We find India an inspiring place to be working for in sanitation. Things are moving fast, and the government is very supportive of new business models in this space. Toilet Board hopes to help identify new opportunities to drive value out of a system that has been mostly cost to support the businesses that are developing these new models, and also how to create this new narrative, this new story. For us sanitation is a delivery system for resources and information rather than just a place to capture waste and send it out into the sea or even worse, cause pollution in our cities and communities. So, you know, the toilet is really being transformed. In the words of Bill Gates, ‘we need to reinvent the toilet and we are seeing that today’.”

Speaking at the summit, Rajendra Jagtap, CEO, Pune Smart City, said, “New data on public and community toilet usage, wastewater and sewage quality and disease circulation can lead to significant savings in sanitation management and health costs in cities. Sanitation Economy revenue streams can be generated through new public toilet business service models, and the up-cycling of wastewater and sewage into energy, organic fertilisers and reusable water in cities.”

The Sanitation Economy approaches provide three pathways to scale:

Smart Toilets: Public and community toilets optimized by environmental, usage and health sensors to communicate valuable sanitation intelligence to operators and cities
Smart Treatment: Collecting and treating toilet resources, creating value-added products such as renewable energy and organic fertilizers
Tech Enabling Smart Health: Connecting information from sanitation systems to people making decisions at treatment plants, government regulators and healthcare organizations

The sanitation economy in India is a $14 billion market which is expected to double to an estimated US $62 billion by 2021. The increased toilet construction, operations and maintenance including cleaning are successfully providing universal access to sanitation in the country. There is emergence of new markets for treated water, renewable energy, organic compost, proteins and nutrients as well.

The digitization of sanitation systems to capture data will further enable the monitoring of human health and behavior, thus generating more opportunities for businesses across sectors to ensure sanitation access, to contribute their own toilet resources to sanitation economy and to achieve zero waste targets. It will also allow operators to leverage new business models to enable cost effective benefits. For governments it will mean delivering sanitation services faster with generation of revenue and promotion of new markets for private sector engagement and investment.

In the four day long summit TBC showcased how the business models work today and where the gaps are, specifically in the operation and maintenance segment. The Toilet Board Coalition can do an open call for entrepreneurs to fill spaces lagging behind because of management and support them through our programming.

One such partner LIXIL, maker of pioneering water and housing products and one of the key member of Toilet Board Coalition with a vision to provide safe sanitation to 100 mn people across the world by 2025; has committed to draw attention to people in rural and peri-urban areas which do not have safe or adequate sanitation. LIXIL is a key member of this unique business-led partnership through its social business – SATO, offers a range of innovative and affordable toilet products designed for base-of-pyramid consumers in rural communities across the world. So far LIXIL has rolled out its new ‘tailored’ SATO series of toilets in 10 states. SATO Toilet Systems have been recommended by the Government of India’s Dr. Mashelkar Committee on sanitation as a water saving technology.

Erin McCusker, Chief Strategy Officer of SATO, LIXIL who has also been appointed Chairperson of the Toilet Board Coalition (Global), said, “The Toilet Board Coalition is uniquely positioned to amplify the importance of sanitation and the private sector in achieving all of our global goals across multiple issues and sectors, well beyond SDG6. I am eager to build on the tremendous work of the past Chairs and the momentum in the sector by showcasing the value of the Sanitation Economy and the role of all actors through our projects, growing Accelerator cohort, and the Global Sanitation Economy Summit.”

Some of the other aspects encircling the four-day long summit include: