AquaSafi Purification Systems Changing The Operating Model Case Solution

Fluoride was contained in this water as well as nitrate and bacterial contaminants, which caused diseases due to water and other illnesses. Another challenge facing many of India’s villages involved the inefficient use of government-provided water storage tanks, which were connected to the local water providers. These tanks were used as a backup and for emergency purposes and were brought to use in the dry seasons. In Karnataka, the government had set up 6000 water reservoirs, but only 1000 were operational. Companies were invited by the government to bid to purify this water for the people in these rural areas. The pricing structure that these companies set was high, often between 7 and 10 per 20 liters, and the machinery was unnecessarily complex, which caused a high cost of maintenance for these villages. After this investment was recovered, they had no desire to reinvest in new machinery, so these companies stopped operating in these villages ("AquaSafi Purification System | Sustainable Business Model", 2012). 

AquaSafi Purification Systems Pvt Ltd. (AquaSafi) was a social enterprise that had the objective of selling clean water to people in developing countries. The company gathered and sold their technologically purified water at a profitable cost in villages and NGOs in the rural areas of India, which formed a great majority in India. Before the company had decided to change AquaSafi’s present model of operation, the CEO wanted to do a cost/benefit analysis to see how the company’s profitability would differ at the new water filtration plants under the newly designed model. He also wanted to know if it would be profitable to change its operating model as the company expanded its operations as the company’s working model had been in place already in the villages (Jewellers, 2017).

AquaSafi’s water purifier systems addressed the concerns of excess levels of fluoride, as well as nitrate and bacterial contamination. The early processes involved the organization’s purifier system passed river water or groundwater through sand filtration, subjecting it to a process of reverse osmosis, after which the treater water was exposed to ultraviolet light to element the bacteria in the drinking water. Its technology was more widely over most other systems because it consumed less electricity and reduced the wastage of water by 30% as well—furthermore, the system was compact a well, requiring only a small space in which to operate. In the newer plants, they had modems installed in the panel boards of the purification systems, which could be monitored easily. These modems were used to transfer machine data to ensure the plants were operating safely and efficiently.

The case has been solved using the breakeven analysis and differential analysis. The case required recognizing the challenges faced by a social enterprise, make a business decision based on qualitative and quantitative analysis to implement the objectives of the company to solve a big global concern, which is the unsafe water for drinking purposes in the developing world ("The Benefits Of Combining Data With Empathy Case Study Help and Case Solution", 2020).