Impact Water Expands Office Space!

This April we focused on a cool startup that is impacting a very important element of our health and well-being in the office space, Water! 70% of our body is water, think about how important it is to provide safe drinking water since we consume water on a daily basis. Impact Water is changing the water technology scene, we spoke to Brendan Sullivan their lead in Kenyan on the basics of their industry.

What is Impact Water?

Impact Water is a social enterprise which delivers safe drinking water to schools. We offer modern water purification systems, preventive maintenance, and multi-year loans so that providing Kenyan students with safe drinking water is easier than ever. Our goal is to see every student in Kenya with safe drinking water to achieve better health and better education. We’re one of the first drinking water solutions company to finance purification systems and allow schools to time their loan payments with the receipt of school’s fees. We’re also the first to provide a preventive maintenance program included in every installation.

Services by Impact Water?

Impact Water finances and installs modern water purification systems, with a strong focus on schools. We maintain a range of different purification systems which are tailored to schools, and depending on school size, electricity access, or water consistency, Impact Water will provide a system that works within that environment. We also provide multi-term financing plans that are tied to school revenue periods. This means that schools are only asked to make payments when school fees are coming in.

Impact Water’s Business Model?

Impact Water finances, installs, and maintains water purification systems. We intentionally offer a full-service package, as our success is tied directly to a functioning purification system years after the initial installation. We also want to work with all potential customers in the marketplace, which means having both varied purification technologies and innovative financing offerings to reach lower income areas, rural areas, and other marginalized or vulnerable populations.

Challenges at Impact Water?

Impact Water is facing a lot of challenges that early stage businesses face; hiring strong initial teams, understanding our growth trajectory, and setting realistic sales and operational goals against this. Further we need to fit our offer into the Kenya market, which has a range of water challenges such as water access problems, and high mineral content such as fluoride or salinity. These challenges will also be localized at times, which will mean focused county and even sub-county level solutions.

Team Impact Water

Impact Water is about to bring on a sales team of 4 people along with a 2-person installation team. Along with them, Brendan Sullivan is our current Country Director, and this team will grow rapidly as we build out other departments. We’re still hiring for our sales and installation teams along with taking general inquiries, so please send a note if you’re interested in working with us.

Impact Water’s Vision: long-term and short-term?

Our long-term vision is for every student in Kenya to have access to safe drinking water. It is recognized that the school environment can become an added source of disease transmission, and each year, children lose 272 million school days due to diarrhea, and an estimated one in three school-aged children in the developing world are infested with intestinal worms. Not only do these illnesses rob children of school attendance and achievement, they are underlying causes of malnutrition and stunting.

To accomplish this vision, we need to have a strong and robust business that Is growing aggressively, both within higher performing markets; like urban areas and large private Institutions, and harder to reach areas, along with public Institutions.

Our short-term goals are to jump-start that growth with strong sales in and around Nairobi, along with an early focus on creating partnerships that allow us to reach hundreds of schools at a time.