Ekatvam is in one of the top 10 hand-picked Water Management startups to watch in 2023 globally by StartUs Insights.(https://www.startus-insights.com/innovators-guide/water-management-startups/) Ekatvam is a social startup on a mission to make water management data centric and sustainable in rural/semi-urban areas through a multi-stakeholder decision support tool named MIDAS. It was founded in the year 2021. Since then, Ekatvam has implemented its solution in 86 villages along with 8 NGO partners including Tata trust backed NGOs like CSPC, CINI etc. They have been funded and supported by incubators like Digital Impact Square (a TCS Foundation initiative), Villgro Foundation, ICCW-IIT Madras and Imagine H20. MIDAS is a multi-stakeholder water governance tool that provides just-in-time data driven decision making support for water management at a village level. The tool aims at helping the target communities understand their local water balance, on a monthly basis, and decide how best to optimize its use and conservation through science-based data and analytics. Data from local wells, metrological stations, remote sensing, and data from other secondary sources, is fed into the tool on a continuous basis and specially designed algorithms generate water balance estimates. Historical data is also used to provide a trend analysis. Options for optimizing water use are also provided. The analytics are captured in local language and are pushed to the mobiles of registered farmers. Hard copies are shared by NGO partners who share its details in community meetings. This is the first time that such automated water analytics and advisories are being delivered to target communities, on a continuous basis and are leading to timely decision making.
