2 Chennai Engineers Helped 130+ Buildings Save 5 Billion Litres of Water by Spotting Hidden Leaks

EarthFokus began by reducing water wasted at ordinary taps, then expanded into a broader building-water service. Founded in 2019 by Arun Subramanian and Rishi Vandan, the Chennai-based startup helps commercial buildings measure consumption, find leaks, recover evaporated water and reduce daily use.

Its first fixture reduced tap flow from around 10–12 litres per minute to as little as 0.5 litres. The company later developed WaterOS, which uses connected meters and sensors to monitor water, and EcoVapure, which recovers some cooling-tower losses. WaterFokus is its third solution.

Together, EarthFokus says these systems have helped more than 130 commercial buildings save over five billion litres. The company shifted from selling plumbing products to providing a way for buildings to measure problems and verify the savings created by interventions.

The company says its solutions have helped more than 130 commercial buildings save over five billion litres of water. This is not a figure for one building or one device. It is the combined saving reported across all the buildings using EarthFokus interventions.

The total includes savings linked to several approaches. WaterOS helps teams find unusual consumption and possible leaks. EcoVapure recovers some water lost from cooling-tower evaporation. Low-flow fixtures reduce the amount released during routine tasks such as handwashing. These interventions address different sources of waste.

At this scale, five billion litres signals the effect of repeating small improvements across many commercial sites. The article does not give an average saving per building or a separate breakdown by product. It does show that measuring use, fixing problems and recovering losses can produce a substantial aggregate result.

A hidden water leak is water escaping from a building system without being immediately noticed. It could come from a running toilet, a leaking valve or another fault. Because the water may drain away unseen, the leak can continue for weeks before a visible sign appears.

WaterOS places IoT-enabled flow meters and sensors on supply lines and in areas such as floors, washrooms and cooling towers. The equipment sends continuous readings to the cloud. If a restroom normally uses water during office hours but almost none overnight, steady flow at 2 am becomes an anomaly.

The system learns normal patterns using time of day, occupancy and seasonal variation. It flags deviations for facility managers to investigate. This does not automatically prove the cause, but it helps teams find possible leaks sooner than a monthly water bill would.

WaterOS is a building-monitoring platform designed to show how water is being used in near real time. IoT-enabled flow meters and sensors collect readings from important points, including supply lines, floors, washrooms and cooling towers. The data is sent to the cloud for analysis.

The system learns expected consumption patterns. It considers the time of day, building occupancy and seasonal variation. For example, a restroom may show heavy use during office hours and almost no use overnight. If water continues flowing steadily at 2 am, WaterOS flags that pattern as unusual.

Facility managers then investigate the likely cause, such as a running toilet or leaking valve. WaterOS does not replace that investigation. Its value is speed: it can highlight possible problems before they remain hidden for weeks, unlike a monthly bill that reports consumption only after the water has been used.

Cooling towers remove heat by allowing water to evaporate. This makes them essential for cooling in offices, factories and data centres, but it also creates a continuous water loss. Towers lose additional water through blowdown, when some water is drained, and drift, when tiny droplets are carried away.

EcoVapure’s deployed Capture technology targets towers that produce a visible water-vapour plume. As the plume passes over a specially designed surface, droplets gather and grow. They then fall back into the cooling system, or can be collected separately for other uses. The mechanism recovers water that would otherwise leave with the plume.

EarthFokus says Capture can recover roughly 30% of evaporation loss under relevant operating conditions. The actual amount depends on the tower and its operating environment. Thus, EcoVapure reduces one important loss, but it does not eliminate all cooling-tower water use.

Low-flow taps and similar fixtures reduce the water released during routine activities without asking users to change the task itself. EarthFokus began with this idea after noticing that much water from a conventional tap can bounce off a person’s palms and flow unused into the drain.

A conventional tap can release around 10–12 litres per minute, according to Rishi. EarthFokus developed a fixture that can reduce flow to as little as 0.5 litres per minute. The fixture therefore targets excess flow at the source, while people continue washing their hands in the usual way.

This approach matters because it works passively. Users do not need to remember a new habit each time they use the tap. The company later learned that fixtures alone were not enough, so it added monitoring and verification to show buildings how much their interventions actually saved.

A small reduction at one tap matters because commercial buildings repeat the same activity many times. Every handwash, restroom visit and other routine use adds another opportunity to avoid water that is not needed. The article describes this as a building-scale problem rather than a single-tap problem.

EarthFokus gives a clear example. A conventional tap can release around 10–12 litres per minute, while its fixture can bring flow down to as little as 0.5 litres per minute. If the lower flow still provides enough water for the task, each use avoids excess flow. Repeated across occupants and working days, those reductions accumulate.

The company says more than 130 commercial buildings have saved over five billion litres through its combined solutions. That total also includes leak detection and cooling-tower recovery, so it cannot be attributed only to taps. It nevertheless illustrates why repeated small interventions can create large aggregate savings.