“Know-how is one thing you’re all the time interacting with. It’s with you and a part of your day by day life. However there’s one other aspect of expertise that runs within the background, making your life higher and guaranteeing that all the pieces round you works correctly,” says Advait Kumar, explaining the distinction between a tech product that’s entrance and heart in your life and one which seamlessly fades into the background.
Kumar, who’s a co-founder and CEO of Gurgaon-based Boon, believes in expertise that “lives within the background, not on the forefront”, a philosophy that kinds the inspiration of how he and his crew are engineering a brand new form of “water tech” platform.
With a bachelor’s diploma in electrical engineering and economics from Penn State College and expertise working at JPMorgan within the US, Kumar returned to India to begin Boon in 2014. Again then, the corporate was referred to as Swajal, a social affect enterprise whose water merchandising kiosks, dubbed WaterATMs, caught the eye of varied state governments and the general public at giant. The concept was impressed by Dr Vibha Tripathi, a physics graduate and PhD holder from the Indian Institute of Know-how Kanpur and Kumar’s mom. Whereas engaged on a UNDP-funded undertaking, she realised the significance of offering clear ingesting water to underserved communities and started researching options for water purification.
Nonetheless, in 2019, Kumar transitioned the corporate from rural WaterATMs to a tech-driven wellness platform, which is what Boon is named right this moment. Regardless of the shift, clear water stays on the core of the startup’s strategy and mission.
“We determined to maneuver into the wellness phase as a result of we believed that water is the underpinning and basis of all the pieces we do. If that basis is powerful, then whether or not you’re making a smoothie, getting ready a drink, or just hydrating your self correctly day by day, it makes an actual distinction,” Kumar informed indianexpress.com in an interview.
Advait Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Boon. (Picture: Boon)
For Kumar, Boon is a expertise firm engaged on wellness by water. “We have now been engaged on the expertise aspect for a really very long time, and it has lastly reached some extent the place we determined to use that expertise to wellness. That’s as a result of issues like water and even air are important for people, but it’s not all the time simple to tell apart the standard or perceive the method behind them until one thing is severely improper. There’s lots of opacity within the area,” he explains.
For the previous few years, the startup has made its presence felt on the B2B aspect of the enterprise, with shoppers throughout the hospitality sector and huge corporates. Boon affords commercial-grade merchandise, together with micro water bottling vegetation and high-end purification methods for motels and workplaces. Nonetheless, the corporate has just lately pivoted towards dwelling water purification options.
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Two merchandise: Boon Tall, Boon Faucet
Boon presently affords two merchandise, certainly one of which is the Boon Tall, a high-capacity water purification system that gives sizzling, regular, and chilly water choices in a compact design for properties in addition to companies requiring as much as 60 liters per hour. The product is priced at Rs 49,990.
Boon Faucet (Picture: Boon)
The second product, Boon Faucet, is a uniquely designed water air purifier. Its Modern, manufactured from metal, and has the form of a faucet, therefore the identify Boon Faucet. The air purifier itself is put in behind the system, whereas customers entry purified water straight by the faucet above. The Boon Faucet retails for Rs 20,500.
“As an alternative of getting a knob, it contains a toggle. We didn’t need folks to really feel like they had been utilizing a standard equipment. In fashionable properties, consumer interfaces are extra intuitive – you utilize a toggle to change one thing on or off relatively than turning a knob. There are small design parts like that all through the product. Even the machine beneath may be very compact and designed with a glossy glass end,” Kumar stated.
To design the Boon Faucet, Advait Kumar and his crew drew inspiration from Bang & Olufsen, an organization recognized for its premium audio merchandise that has distinct aesthetics and opulent design, inserting them in a league of their very own. Kumar is positioning the Boon Faucet as a life-style product relatively than only a standard water air purifier one historically seen throughout Indian properties.
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“It’s mainly an under-sink water air purifier with two separate models. One is the shelling out unit, from which you get the water, and the opposite is the purification unit. The purification unit could be put in anyplace…beneath the sink, beneath the counter, and even farther away,” he explains.
The Boon Faucet is designed with two separate models, just like a cut up AC system: one unit could be put in discreetly wherever the consumer needs to cover it, whereas the seen unit is solely the faucet by which the water is distributed. “It really works with a easy on-and-off mechanism, and we even have an app that enables customers to set completely different modes, corresponding to deciding on the form of water they need,” Kumar stated.
Boon and in-house crew
Not solely is the design crew in-house, however the firm additionally handles embedded IoT parts and PCB meeting internally, bringing end-to-end manufacturing beneath one roof. Kumar stated the buyer merchandise are manufactured on the firm’s manufacturing unit in Gurgaon, Haryana, whereas industrial merchandise are produced at its manufacturing unit in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
The system additionally features a full UV sterilization stage, that means each drop of water is handled successfully. (Picture: Boon)
Kumar stated the corporate’s filtration system is “over-engineered” at each stage, with filters lasting about 30 months (roughly two and a half years) and a substitute price of roughly Rs 5,000 for the complete set. Nonetheless, the corporate additionally permits customers to buy particular person filters individually.
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“Our polypropylene (PP) filter has grooves in it, which permit it to carry extra filth. The truth is, our PP filters can maintain as much as two occasions extra filth than common PP filters, whereas our membrane can function at as much as 2,500 whole dissolved solids stage (TDS), whereas most membranes begin giving up at 1500 TDS,” defined Kumar.
The system additionally features a full UV sterilization stage, that means each drop of water is handled successfully. It’s designed to be an open platform, permitting customers to interchange filters themselves and even use third-party filters. “If you wish to use any filter, you possibly can. If you wish to change the filters your self, you possibly can merely purchase them and do it by yourself,” Kumar stated. “We have now additionally made the method very simple for customers, and internally, we name it an open platform, although we haven’t actively promoted it that manner but,” he added.
Kumar stated the corporate’s merchandise are impressed by linked good dwelling units, particularly how Google’s Nest thermostat works, the place the expertise stays within the background and learns consumer patterns, relatively than being intrusive or continuously within the consumer’s face. Within the case of its Boon merchandise, the tech behind them not solely displays the standard of water but in addition measures the temperature. If the temperature may be very excessive, for instance, the app provides you an alert.
“When you have a water tank in your roof and very popular water is coming by it, the warmth can harm your RO membrane, which is basically an artificial polymer. When uncovered to excessive temperatures, it expands and permits extra particles to move by its pores,” he defined, whereas describing the distinction between water purifiers with RO expertise and Boon.
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Kumar describes the Boon Faucet, for instance, a tech product, just like a smartphone, highlighting its Extremely Osmosis expertise, which mixes a number of filtration phases to ship longer filter life, diminished water wastage, and improved water high quality.
Utilizing AI for predictive upkeep
Since 2019, Kumar stated the corporate has been engaged on synthetic intelligence expertise used for predictive upkeep, initially developed for industrial shoppers corresponding to JW Marriott. The corporate’s AI displays parameters corresponding to water temperature, TDS ranges, and utilization traits to forecast filter life and forestall sudden failures. As an alternative of utilizing multimodal fashions, Kumar stated the corporate makes use of Amazon’s time-series mannequin Chronos.
The companion app that works with each Boon Faucet and Tall. (Picture: Boon)
Based on Kumar, the thought is to make use of synthetic intelligence to handle filters successfully. Kumar says the AI expertise, which was beforehand restricted to its industrial merchandise, can also be being built-in into shopper merchandise.
In the meantime, the companion app that works with each Boon Faucet and Tall serves as a standing show for AI predictions, utilizing easy emoticons to speak filter well being and substitute probability. The interface, in accordance with Kumar, avoids technical jargon or complicated statistics, as an alternative displaying blissful or unhappy faces together with simple substitute timelines.
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Altering notion about water purifiers
Kumar’s imaginative and prescient is to vary the notion that water purifiers could be as private and aesthetically designed as premium, upmarket shopper electronics, corresponding to a high-end iPhone, a premium OLED TV, or a linked fridge. “Water purifiers have change into such a fixture in properties that I believe design, magnificence, aesthetics, and high quality will matter much more than simply having one,” explains Kumar.
No marvel Kumar is aiming to market its water purifiers as a “wellness” product, significantly the Boon Faucet, which he believes will resonate extra with customers who worth kitchen design and consider its merchandise as premium, linked home equipment.
Boon competes straight with established water air purifier manufacturers corresponding to Kent, however Kumar’s firm differentiates itself by its design, expertise, and concentrate on mineralised, wholesome water.
Boon Faucet advertising channels
Kumar plans to promote Boon Faucet by a number of channels, together with Amazon, however with a stronger emphasis on partnerships with health occasions, opening pop-up shops, and high-end malls in cities corresponding to Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Mumbai. Kumar provides that large-format retail is much less of a precedence, with a concentrate on curated, experiential gross sales touchpoints that align with the model’s premium positioning. The plan additionally contains leveraging industrial architects and inside designers to combine the merchandise into high-end kitchens and industrial areas.
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Footprints in Maldives, Bangladesh
The startup has 400 staff in whole, with 300 of them being technicians. Kumar stated the corporate’s industrial operations have a large footprint in nations such because the Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan, and it’s already taking over large-scale tasks outdoors India. For its shopper merchandise, nonetheless, India stays the first focus for now, and the corporate is engaged on a differentiated go-to-market technique.
As of now, the industrial aspect generates income and serves as the corporate’s core power, whereas the house phase is predicted to drive the majority of future income progress, says Kumar.
Boon has traders, together with the Division of Science and Know-how and the Spanish sanitary ware firm Roca, amongst others. Kumar stated there is no such thing as a stress to boost further capital for the time being.
Kumar’s Boon is engaged on a number of new merchandise and testing new markets. For instance, there’s a water air purifier that may be positioned on a desk and also can dispense glowing water, in addition to the same product that additionally produces ice. These merchandise are presently premium-priced and focused at luxurious motels and workplaces.
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For Kumar, the problem is scaling these superior merchandise to cost factors which might be inexpensive for broader shopper markets with out compromising high quality.