Eram Scientific Services, cohort member of the Toilet Board Coalition 2020 Accelerator programme based in Kerala, India, is launching its first livelihood model toilet facility this month in collaboration with Hindustan Unilever.
Eram Scientific has been successfully installing automatic toilets in India and abroad for over 10 years. While the installations are well received, the company noticed a clear gap in the maintenance and operation of the facilities and worked with TBC and Unilever to develop a new business model addressing this gap.
This new livelihood model, consisting of attaching a shop to the toilet facility, is leveraging the growing trend of micro-enterprises in India, offering micro-entrepreneurs a living while serving the community with clean and functioning public toilets: providing sanitation, enabling livelihood.
The shops attached to the toilet facility and maintained by the entrepreneur, will either be traditional corner shops offering daily food and beverage necessities, eCarts focusing on mobile products, health kiosks selling health and hygiene related products.
Lead by women entrepreneurs, backed by Eram and enabled by local government, this model delivers many benefits:
- Offering clean public toilets to the local community
- Generating employment in India
- Advancing the Sanitation Economy.
Eram Scientific plays a key role in the development of this livelihood model, acting as a facilitator agent between the local government body and the entrepreneurs, as well as providing logistic support and technical maintenance of the toilet facilities.
The company has just deployed its first pilot facility in the bustling town of Nedumangad, in the outskirts of the city of Trivandrum, which offers hygiene products from Hindustan Unilever.
“Being in the Accelerator Programme and receiving mentoring from the Toilet Board Coalition and our mentor at Unilever helped us refine our business model and develop our marketing objective, while also giving us access to Unilever products for our shop concept”, says Srija Santhosh, Business Development Manager at Eram Scientific.
“Eram Scientific are looking at developing Entrepreneur led Sanitation model and are launching their first livelihood model toilet facility. We are happy to collaborate with them in developing a new business model. We believe this has the potential of leveraging entrepreneur potential while providing sanitation to the community”, says Geetika Mehta, General Manager Home & Hygiene, Hindustan Unilever
ABOUT ERAM SCIENTIFIC SOLUTION
Eram Scientific Solution’s “eToilet” is India’s first automatic, unmanned, electronic public toilet in the automated public Sanitation market. Through this unique product, our attempt is to address the inherent challenges of hygiene and sustainability of public sanitation and bring in whole cycle approach from entry to waste treatment, with conservation of water and resources at its core. eToilet is developed on a holistic convergence of the latest technologies; which is cost effective and suitable for the geographic and demographic patterns of any location. It has adopted the concept of “Internet of Things” (IoT) for monitoring and proper upkeep and has integrated a comprehensive O&M mechanism to sustain operations.
Website: https://eramscientific.com/
ABOUT Hindustan Unilever:
Hindustan Unilever is an Indian consumer goods company headquartered in Mumbai, India. It is a subsidiary of Unilever, a British-Dutch company. Its products include foods, beverages, cleaning agents, personal care products, water purifiers and other fast-moving consumer goods. Website: https://www.hul.co.in/
About Toilet Board Coalition
Founded in 2014, the TBC is a unique business-led partnership with the ambition to address the global sanitation crisis by accelerating the Sanitation Economy. The TBC is enabling private sector engagement; connecting large and small companies; and ensuring close collaboration between private, public and non-profit sectors with the common goal to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6), universal access to sanitation. The TBC runs the Toilet Accelerator, the world’s 1st accelerator programme dedicated to sanitation entrepreneurs in low-income markets. The members of the Toilet Board Coalition believe that accelerating the Sanitation Economy will deliver significant impact to business and society.
Website : https://www.toiletboard.org
