7 people died and 149+ were hospitalised in Indore after sewage leaked into drinking water. How many lives must be lost before cities fix what flows beneath our feet? An IIT-M startup is changing how we protect our water.
A toilet built directly above a main drinking water pipeline without a safety tank contaminated the water supply. The tragedy raises one urgent question: why are cities discovering pipeline failures after people die?
Founded by Divanshu Kumar and Moinak Banerjee, Solinas built EndoBot — robots that crawl inside pipelines with high-resolution cameras and sensors to detect leaks, blockages and contamination before pipes are damaged.
The technology works across pipe sizes from 90mm to 1500mm, powered by robotics, AI and machine learning, giving cities live, actionable data from underground.
Already deployed in 30+ cities, Solinas serves governments, utilities, industries and urban local bodies. Their work has delivered clean water to 100,000+ households and saves millions of litres every day.
In Hubbali alone, their work restored potable water to 1,000 urban slum households after two years. Every kilometre of inspection saves 4–6 lakh litres of water, reduces labour costs and helps eliminate manual scavenging.
This is how disasters like Indore can be prevented. Clean water is not a privilege. It is the most basic promise of civilisation. And today, we finally have the tools to keep that promise.