By and large, the technology for water recycling and purification in India has been borrowed from Western countries. Its characteristic feature is the pumping of air into water, then heating it and infusing it with nutrients. In the Western context, this is appropriate as the water tends to be cold and contain few microorganisms. However, in treating India’s water—which is warmer and more microbe-rich—aeration can prove wasteful.

When it comes to solid waste management, compressed biogas plants are already using anaerobic microbe metabolism. What if this approach could be adapted for liquid waste?

This was the idea that inspired Bengaluru-based Tellus Habitats. Founded in 2021 by Dr Seema Sukhani and Naveen Janardhan, this startup offers water treatment units based on unique biofilters. Being easy to set up and requiring no manual operation, these units facilitate the decentralized recycling of water across various settings.

How does the innovation work?

Tellus’s solution, unlike most in the market, uses minimal air while making full use of the microbes already present in water. The treatment units process input water in multiple stages: removing solid waste, running the water through a patented anaerobic biofilter, aeration, and advanced oxidation using an internal ozone generator. What comes out of a unit is ozonated and filtered 100 micron water.

Each machine can range in capacity from 5000 liters to 1 lakh liters per day. All steps from capacity estimation to the final setting up are carried out by Tellus. Installation can be completed in merely 3–7 days. During operation, it is silent, lacks any unpleasant odor, and does not need human supervision. It is also energy-efficient compared to its competitors.

Beneficiaries of treatment units

The regular users of these water treatment machines are primarily from Goa, Karnataka, and Odisha, followed by Kerala. Tellus is currently conducting demonstrations in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Rajasthan.

Most of the startup’s private clients are in the hospitality sector, working under establishments such as Radisson and Lotus Sutra. Others are in the residential market (Prestige, Century, Concord), industry (Lloyd’s, Gokaldas Exports), education, and medicine (PHCs). On the other hand, there are also two major government clients—the Bhubaneswar Municipal Authority and Bhubaneswar Development Authority. 

Currently, Tellus has 60+ units in operation across India. By the end of 2026, it expects to have expanded to around 100 units. Since Tellus’s solution is designed to be easy to set up, is unmanned, and uses different machine capacities, it can be adopted by a wide range of users and communities. 

Quality of operation

So far, Tellus’s units have had a decommissioning rate of 0%, and none of them have shown more than minor technical glitches. Every year they require a downtime of only 18 days. 

When setting up a new unit for a client, Tellus can estimate the requisite machine capacity with 80% accuracy. This ensures that both water wastage and power consumption are minimized. Compared to competitors, for the same volume of water input, a Tellus machine can have energy savings of 30–50%. 

Funding and other support

In the early stages, Tellus was supported by the Start-up India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS). This was routed via C-CAMP, which also provided the startup with mentoring and guidance and access to a research facility. 

The second source of support was Forge Innovation & Ventures, which helped Tellus draft grant applications to the Indian government. Through their support, Tellus won some grants from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology such as TIDE 2.0.

Finally, during the demonstration stage, Social Alpha played a key role in helping the startup reach out to the appropriate funding sources.

Scaling for the future

Tellus Habitat’s work represents the importance of developing indigenous technology for water resource management. Rather than working with the standard aeration-based technology that is popular in the West, the startup team used its experience in biotechnology to design a new biofilter suitable for the Indian context. 

By facilitating more pilot tests of this technology, policymakers could boost the confidence of the public in anaerobic water treatment. This awareness building and feasibility testing, along with smoothening compliance procedures, can boost the efforts of startups such as Tellus and make water recycling both more effective as well as more affordable.