Blue Tap

By 2050, 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban environments, increasing stress on water resources. Many houses in developing countries now have access to “improved water services” but they still can’t drink the tap water. Although it is clear, it still contains harmful pathogens meaning people become ill, have to boil their water or buy bottled water. Diarrhoeal disease is the second leading cause of deaths of children under 5. 

Blue Tap has designed a chlorine doser which requires no electricity or moving parts to function. It inserts the correct amount of chlorine into a clear water supply in order to make it safe to drink in accordance with the World Health Organisation’s guidelines. It is simple, durable and affordable. 

If this solution was scaled globally it could decrease diarrhoeal disease, improve lung health (through reduced exposure to smoke from boiling over charcoal) and reduce plastic waste.

By 2050, 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban environments, putting huge stress on the water resources. Many settlements in developing countries now have access to “basic water services”, however, they still can’t drink the water that is provided to them by municipal schemes. Although the water is clear, it still contains harmful pathogens, meaning people become ill or have to resort to buying bottled water. Diarrhoeal disease is the second leading cause of deaths of children under 5. 

One common solution is to boil water, but this does not protect against bacteria in containers used for transporting water. In addition, the smoke inhaled from burning fuel is harmful for health. Another is to simply buy bottled water, which creates a lot of plastic waste in countries which often have limited infrastructure to deal with it. 

In schools and refugee camps, large amounts of water need to be purified. Currently, some schools in Uganda boil water for over 900 pupils each day which is very expensive and harmful for catering staff lung health.

Current solutions are mostly too expensive, require electricity or are not designed for emerging markets. 

Blue Tap has designed a chlorine doser which requires no electricity or moving parts to function. It inserts the correct amount of chlorine into a clear water supply in order to make it safe to drink in accordance with the World Health Organisation’s guidelines. The product is ideally suited for rainwater harvesting systems or municipal water supply taps. It works via the Venturi principle so is easy to produce, install and maintain. We've also conducted a successful field trial of our technology in September.

The chlorine doser will come as part of a water purifier pack which can be easily installed by local plumbers onto household water pipes, meaning that water can be purified to drinking water quality. The plumbers will be trained to fully, and safely dose water and insert exactly the right amount of chlorine into the water supply, so people can be confident that the water they are drinking is safe.

Chlorination is already a well-established, tried and tested method of treating water. Aqueous chlorine is readily available in many of the markets where we wish to work, but where it is not, it is easy to teach plumbers to mix up the chlorine correctly.

We target urban households who have access to piped water that is not safe to drink. This equates to a total addressable market of around 127 million households. We have interviewed households as part of our field visit to Uganda. We have also held human-centered design workshops with the local plumbers who will install and maintain our technology in order to get feedback on our design. We impact households by providing safe water at a low cost and plumbers by increasing their livelihood. 

Alongside this, we have market potential in schools, hospitals and refugee camps across developing countries, which we are currently exploring in our field visits. A feature of the schools market is that most secondary schools students in East Africa are boarding at the school. This means that they have a particularly strong incentive to chlorinate water, as the large volumes of water involved make other purification techniques  much more expensive and labour intensive. Therefore for institutions we are a cost-effective way of providing large amounts of safe water to students, patients or refugees. It is likely that during commercialisation we will partner with a large charity or non-governmental organisation (NGO) to scale these models. 

It is said that prevention is better than a cure. Good hygiene, enabled by access to safe water is critical in preventing and slowing the spread of diseases. Safe water itself is critical in preventing diseases such as cholera, typhoid, diarrhoea and dysentery especially in refugee camps where the population density is very high. It estimated that unsafe water causes 485,000 deaths per year due to diarrhoea alone (WHO). At the time of writing, this is more than the coronavirus. As the global pandemic reduces livelihoods, it is more important than ever that safe water is affordable.

The Venturi prinicple is a well-established principle that states that as a pipe gets narrower, the pressure decreases. We use this pressure decrease to suck chlorine into pipes. What makes our device unique is our innovative pressure feedback system which makes our chlorine doser function with a wide range of household and institutional water pressures, without a complex and time-consuming calibration process. This is basically a hydraulic-only control system. Alongside this, the business model of having plumbers act as our local representatives to install and maintain the technology is a unique selling point as water interventions have historically struggled with poor maintenance. This innovative business model means that our solution is community-led and empowers local plumbers to expand their businesses - improving the local economy. 

The Venturi principle is widely used throughout engineering, from carburetors to spray cans. We are applying this technology to household and institutional water pipes. Our new application of this technology is by combining it with a simple hydraulic control system so that the chlorine dosing is independent of the pressure of the system, which makes our chlorine doser applicable to a wide variety of institutional and household setups. This no-electricity approach means our solution is accessible to a much wider range of households. The simplicity of our technology means that it is more appropriate for our target market as it massively reduces the cost. 

The Venturi principle is widely used throughout engineering, from carburetors to spray cans to measurement of flow rates. It is used with both gas and liquids. We are currently 3D printing iterations of the design in order to perfect it. It is likely to be injection moulded in mass production. 

For a video of a much earlier prototype (before the implementation of the hydraulic control system which is a trade secret) see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYPcsDTaos4.

Blue Tap's two overall outcomes are: 

1) "Beneficiaries have better health and save money" as measured by quantitative data on DALYs and savings.

2) "The local economy has improved" as measured by the local house prices and employment rate. 

Our connecting outcomes for better health and savings are: to halve the purification bill of each family/school/refugee camp and to sell beneficiaries the chlorine injectors. Selling rather than donating the chlorine dosers to beneficiaries (100,000 units sold by 2023) is an important step as it shows that the need we are meeting is important enough for people to spend their money on. Health data is difficult to gather as there are many factors involved which are interdependent. Beneficiaries buying the product suggests that they have seen a demonstrable health and savings effect. It also ensures our initiative is financially sustainable and scalable. 

Our connecting outcomes for local economy improvement include increased employment within the water industry and increased income for plumbers. Economic research has linked income and employment rate to the improvement of the economy overall (eg. income and employment theory).

Our immediate outputs therefore include: liaising with community health workers and women's groups to raise awareness of water issues, making chlorine available in a cost-effective manner using local distributors, implementing a chlorine refill scheme to reduce plastic waste, manufacturing cost-effectively for £5 per unit production cost, training plumbers in entrepreneurship, increasing employment within the chlorine supply chain and running a flexible scheme to encourage women to become sales representatives. All of these outputs have measurable targets to ensure we can monitor our impact. 

Currently we have run workshops in water purification and entrepreneurship for around 30 plumbers. 

In the next year, we aim to do two pilot studies. The first, in Uganda, serving 5 schools (~900 students at each school) and 15 households (~5 people per household) with our technology. This would require training of 5 plumbers and a direct sales team of 3 local female leaders. The second trial would be a refugee camp trial, as chlorine is easily scalable to large volumes of water making it an ideal solution for refugee camps. Therefore in the next year we aim to serve around 5,000 people. 

In the next 5 years, we will focus on either the B2C, B2B or refugee camp market, based on the findings of this pilot year. The B2C model expects over 450,000 people to be impacted within 5 years (based on sales figures from a bottom-up estimation from number of plumbers trained). Our B2B school/refugee camp model predicts serving around 3 million people (a conservative estimate, based on the numbers currently served by our potential partners). 

We have two main goals for the next year: 

1) Complete the internal and external validation of product performance. We first plan to troubleshoot our method of internal validation and ensure our product meets our tests in order to reduce the costs of an external company completing these test. Tests include finalising the working range of water pressures, longevity testing and microbiological testing. We have engaged with an accredited company to perform microbiological testing. We would also like to gain the NSF certification to show that none of our materials leach into the water. 

2) Run a small pilot test with a local partner on 5 schools and 15 households in Uganda. If possible, run a pilot in a refugee camp, although this may run on into year 2. 

In the next 5 years we aim to have validated one of the three possible business models and scaled that up. Our method of training local plumbers is easily scalable as successful plumbers will help train new ones. Therefore in 5 years we aim to serve between 450,000 to 3 million people, enabling further rapid growth with the profits generated from this. 

Although we have enough money for the internal product performance validation, financial barriers exist for the microbiological testing and certification of our product. This certification would be instrumental in gaining NGO partnerships for either of the B2C or B2B models, but particularly in trying to serve refugee markets and schools. 

Legal barriers include navigating the regulatory environments for our business and product in other countries.   

Cultural barriers include a resistance to chlorine. 

Other barriers include the spending power of our target market. 

The barrier to implementing in refugee camps or in situations of natural disaster is a lack of partner to conduct a field trial with. Gaining the attention of these large NGOs can be difficult as a small company.

The main barrier to our growth and therefore impact is financial and operations expertise. Setting up operations in new countries and being able to cross the chasm from early adopters to the early majority requires money. 

We are aiming to participate in the WHO Water Household Water Treatment Technology assessment programme to help our product be accepted by governments and NGOs without the expensive private certification. Our partner Afrinspire has over 20 years of expertise navigating regulatory environments in Uganda, so there should be minimal legal barriers our household and school pilot study. 

We mitigate resistance to chlorine adoption by targeting countries which already have a wide acceptance to chlorine. We mitigate other cultural barriers by working with experienced partners in the region.

To overcome spending power restrictions, we are exploring a subscription model using complementary pricing, whereby the chlorine consumable profit allows us to sell the chlorine doser itself for a subsidised price. This reduces the risk to the user without relying on a loan agreement which ties beneficiaries to repayments they may sometimes be unable to afford. 

For growth, we are seeking money through grants, corporate partnerships or investment. We are seeking operations expertise from those in our network and other corporate partners. 

N/A.

For the past three years, everybody working on Blue Tap has been on a part-time voluntary basis. From July this year, two of the team go full time meaning that progress in finalising the design and starting the pilot phase will become much more rapid. 

2 full-time (paid)

1 part-time (unpaid)

3 voluntary interns. 

Francesca O’Hanlon - CEO

https://www.linkedin.com/in/fr...
Francesca has spent over six years working as a water and sanitation engineer in El Salvador, Mexico, India, and most recently with Medecins Sans Frontieres in two of the poorest countries in the world: South Sudan, and Central Africa Republic. She built the idea for Blue Tap after working with plumbers all over the world and repeatedly hearing that we need a better way to reliably chlorinate water. She is in her third year of a PhD in Engineering at Cambridge.

Thomas Stakes - CTO
https://www.linkedin.com/in/th...
Tom graduated from Cambridge with a first class degree in engineering. He focused on fluid dynamics for his studies. Tom has spent time working for the WaSH division at the World Health Organisation as well as at Dalberg, the development consultancy. He has taken our product from a basic prototype to the fully working version you see today and has designed the hydraulic control system.

Rebecca Donaldson - COO
https://www.linkedin.com/in/re... 

Becky is an engineering student with extensive impact entrepreneurship experience. In 2017 she coordinated the DAREnterprisers course with the Cambridge Development Initiative in Tanzania where she oversaw the founding of 17 social enterprises. Rebecca also has experience with online ventures, is a Global Action on Poverty changemaker and was awarded the Arthur Shercliff Travel Scholarship to implement a project related to international development. 

Afrinspire is a charity which supports African development initiatives in East Africa. They use a multifaceted approach to protecting and storing clean water on a community-by-community basis. They also run initiatives related to social inclusion, employment, enterprise, training and research. We are working on them for our Uganda field trials. 

Allia Future Business Centre currently supports Blue Tap through their “Future 20” programme, but have accepted Blue Tap’s application to be part of their incubator. This gives Blue Tap 6 months of free office space as well as mentorship and commercialisation advice. Allia has previously supported many successful businesses such as Cambridge Cancer Genomics and Twipes.

Green Empowerment leverages a variety of technologies and approaches to improve access to safe potable drinking water. They will performing some external product performance testing for us. 

Our business model is unique in that our customers and beneficiaries are different. In Uganda, our customers are local plumbers who pay for our water purifying kit and for the service support from the core Blue Tap team. The plumbers then sell the chlorine injector along with their services to our beneficiaries – homeowners in Uganda. Our aim is for there to be a $15 upfront cost, and then a fee of around $4 per month. This fee includes the chlorine consumables. The plumbers receive $30 per installation. The subscription model is managed by Blue Tap. We found this model to be most appropriate for beneficiaries in Uganda as most services; water, electricity, satellite TV are paid for monthly, rather than in one lump sum. Competing water household water purifier systems (UV and filtration) cost a minimum of $600USD over a 12-month period. Our market potential in schools will also be accessed by plumbers, with a larger chlorine doser costing around $120. Partnering with NGOs which already have relations with communities will be a catalyst to our growth. 

We are often approached by NGOs wanting to pilot our solution. If we decide that these partnerships are a more effective way to generate impact and financial sustainability, it is likely that this will be done on a bespoke service basis. This is the most likely model for accessing the refugee camp market. 

Cash flow forecasts show that we will become cash flow positive around 2.5 years after the validation tests are complete. We have funded our product development through small grants, competition winnings and the sale of Blue Tap re-usable bottles. In the UK we generate revenue through the sale of reusable water bottles (£20 or £12 per bottle depending on bottle design) – we have a contract with the University of Cambridge’s Catering Services for these. So far we’ve sold approximately 1100 bottles. This revenue alongside further small grants should fund the product validation and field trials.

To scale up, we will be looking at larger philanthropic grants and investment capital. From then on, we should be financially self-sustainable and scalable through our revenue. 

We are applying to Solve for three core reasons: exposure to NGOs, exposure to potential corporate partners and funding. 

NGOs will be the catalyst for our growth as they already have operations within communities and have invaluable knowledge about these communities. This allows Blue Tap to be fully responsive to local needs, but still scalable. In order to trial our solution in a refugee camp or natural disaster settings, we need a partner. Solve gives us exposure to these organisations, as it can be difficult to get their attention as a small start-up.

Exposure to potential corporate partners helps us to scale as they are experienced with setting up and managing global operations. 

Funding is important as our passion for this global problem can only get us so far. 

Product/service distribution at a global level has high capital requirements to set-up and manage. Partnering with an organisation allows us to share storage space or combine deliveries would massively reduce these costs and allow us to scale faster. 

Funding is important in order to get independent, external verification of our product performance, perform a beta test and scale up.  

Legal and regulatory advice is important to ensure we are compliant with regulations and laws around the world. This helps our consumers to trust us and ensures that our product is of the highest quality.

Marketing, media and exposure is important for gaining new partnerships and would be instrumental in the success of a crowdfunding campaign should one be required. Effective marketing strategies can differ region to region and country to country, so an experienced global marketing partner would be invaluable for scaling rapidly and sustainably. 

For distribution expertise, ideal partners include Johnson & Johnson, Henkel, P&G, RB, Clorox or Unilever. We would also be interested in co-designing our subscription based aqueous chlorine consumable model with these companies. We are also aiming to implement a return and refill scheme for our chlorine consumables, so it would be great to have advice from Closed Loop Partners on how to implement this effectively. 

To implement our refugee camp or natural disaster field trial, ideal potential partners include Save the Children or Oxfam. 

The Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation would be an invaluable partner for navigating regulatory environments in each country we expand to. 

We are also interested in corporate social responsibility partnerships with large companies. Blue Tap has a growing following and has the potential for a large social impact on both health and local economies. 

Any grant opportunities or feedback on applications we are currently writing would also be of great help. 

Francesca founded Blue Tap after working for MSF with local plumbers in South Sudan and Central African Republic and seeing that despite their technical expertise, due to local conflict and poverty, they weren’t being given opportunity to thrive. Blue Tap aims to change the world consumes water by 3D printing affordable water purification technologies for users in developing countries. The Blue Tap business model, partnering with local technicians to sell, install and maintain our affordable technology, empowers tradesmen to become entrepreneurs themselves. Too often, tradesmen and women from the poorest countries in the world cannot thrive because of boundaries outside of their control. Blue Tap is designed to change this.
Francesca is passionate about raising awareness about challenges in global water access, and the relationship between clean water, human health, prosperity and wellbeing. In 2018, Francesca lobbied the University of Cambridge to discontinue the sale of plastic water bottles due to their destructive impact on the world’s seas. Within 6 months, the University had stopped selling bottled water on campus and the Blue Tap reusable bottle campaign was born. Francesca regularly talks in public about humanitarian challenges in Africa, campaigning for MSF. She is passionate about educating younger generations about water, talking at the 2018 Youth Grand Challenges Final, recording a webinar for the online education portal ‘Exploring by the Seat of Your Pants’ and for TYF Adventure in Wales.

As a majority female team, Blue Tap is passionate about empowering fellow women. We have interviewed women's groups in Uganda and met the inspiring leaders. We would like to recruit our sales team from these groups as they have good links to the community. 

In our plumber training workshop, only 2 of the 30 plumbers were female. Our business model empowers plumbers and we want an equal number of female and male plumbers to be empowered. However, currently there simply are not enough female trainees for us to do so. If we won the Innovation for Women's Prize we could sponsor women through the technical training college to become plumbers. This would also help to generate good PR for us and gain trust within the local community. 

The burden of water management largely falls upon women, with the number of women collecting water estimated to be three times the number of men who do so in Sub-Saharan Africa. This means that any improvement in water management will improve the lives of women. 

The chlorine doser is ideal for refugee camps as chlorine is the perfect technology for disinfecting very large volumes of water. Although some camps currently use the Dosatron technology, from experience, our device is easier to install and maintain, alongside being up to 10 times cheaper. Safe water makes refugees more resilient to diseases such as cholera. Safe water enables good hygiene which is crucial in slowing the spread of coronavirus in densely populated refugee settlements. 

Blue Tap's plumber training methodology is easily applied to technical workers employed by NGOs to ensure safe installation and maintenance. 

The Refugee Inclusion prize would fund the external validation of the product alongside a trial of the chlorine doser within a refugee camp. 

The Blue Tap team has grown our following through blog posts, social media and the Blue Tap re-usable bottle campaign in order to run a successful crowdfunding campaign when the time is right. Blue Tap previously won the "People's Choice Award" at the final of the Global Social Venture competition so we know that our solution and ethos appeals to the wider public. 

The People's Prize would fund the pilot study of the chlorine doser in Mbarara, Uganda where we would fit the device onto 5 schools and 15 households to monitor its effectiveness for 3 months before the water is consumed. This would employ 5 plumbers and 3 sales staff. From this field trial, we would have sufficient evidence of our solution working and impacting people in order to engage much larger funders in order to scale-up our solution.