Entrepreneur Profile: NextDrop

In the past two months, I have spoken to countless entrepreneurs in almost every sector and at different stages from ideation to growth. I have been impressed by many but one has kept my attention: NextDrop. Before I share why, I want to briefly introduce NextDrop.

What is NextDrop? NextDrop distributes information on water delivery to urban residents via SMS. Anu Sridharan, a graduate student from Berkeley,  and her team have worked to achieve 25,000 subscriptions in less than a year.

How does NextDrop work? Customers pay a monthly subscription fee for NextDrop's service and receive a text message whenever water is available. To ensure that customers receive timely and accurate messages, NextDrop partners with the local water utility and the valvemen who quite literally turn on and off valves that provide water to certain areas. After he turns on or off the value, the valveman calls into NextDrop's automated phone system.

Why is this important? Currently, urban residents in Hubli receive water once every 5 days or so. In addition, information on water delivery is usually disseminated to households through the local newspaper and as you guessed, that information is likely untimely and inaccurate. Less well-off households deal with this uncertainty by having the wife or children stay at home to collect and store water.

Access to clean water, much like power, is likely an afterthought, if that, for most people in the developed world. In India, no municipal water utility provides 24/7 access to water for all households. If you have never experienced the uncertainty of water access, Mary Fritz, a WDI Fellow who interned with Wello, shares a very real and first-hand encounter with this uncertainty when the water purifier at her apartment broke in the relatively developed urban area of Bandra West in Mumbai.

What is the impact on society? In my previous post about social impact metrics, I explored some of the challenges faced by for-profit enterprises seeking social impact and the need to proactively seeking to define, measure, and track social impact rather than assume that their service automatically leads to social impact. By acknowledging that the Customer is King, NextDrop is proactively gathering data to both understand its customers and incorporate social impact into its core operations.

  

Why is NextDrop my favorite social enterprise? Throughout my many conversations with entrepreneurs, I have noticed a few recurring themes that distinguish some enterprises compared to others. My conversation with Anu has now inspired me to write my final blog post on these themes. You will have to wait for my final post but in the meantime, I want to share one theme: transparency. To be frank, NextDrop is not perfect and has been unabashingly open about its mistakes and missteps since its inception. With each misstep, however, NextDrop has also shared its proposed solutions and lessons learned. This transparency is why NextDrop is my favorite social enterprise. Oh, and my personal interests in women-run enterprises and any entrepreneur using technology for social impact (rather than for technology's sake) may also play some role in this.

Obstacles are faced by all start-ups, social or otherwise. NextDrop's willingness to share its trials and tribulations with the world is rare for entrepreneurs, social or otherwise. Returning to my first blog post, I spoke about my experience at the Impact Investing in Action conference co-hosted by Village Capital. During one of the panel discussions , one speaker rightly mentioned that the players in this space need to share both its successes and failures to move the impact investing industry forward. In my own experience, I have seen little in the way of sharing failures. My hope is that other entrepreneurs will embrace NextDrop's transparency while investors will view this as a sign of maturity, humility, and most importantly, its potential for growth.