KOCHI: Providing clean drinking water through solar pumping solutions for rural villages has made a huge socio-economic impact, changing lives of the villages especially women and young girls, according to a top Grundfos Pumps India official.
Grundfos India Managing Director N K Ranganath said, the company, which sees an organic growth of 10 per cent every year, invests about 5 per cent of its turnover into research and development projects.
“We have installed solar pumps in Odisha, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The initiative has helped the localities to cut down their time spent on collecting clean water and focus on other productive activities.”
Solar pumps contribute 8 per cent of the total sales of the company. The company has installed 17,500 solar pumps in the country since 2009.
“The cost of a solar pump is slightly higher than conventional pumps. The price of traditional pump is Rs 45,000 to supply water to a few households whereas the solar variant costs Rs 65,000. But the farmer needs to spend 10-20 per cent of the total amount as the rest is available as subsidy from the government,” said Ranganath.
Also there is no maintenance cost involved in solar pumps that can be operated 6 to 7 hours, he said.
In Chennai, the company runs an assembling plant of water pumps. The components for water pumps in this plant are imported. The company has sold 43,144 pumps altogether in India in 2015, out of which agriculture contributes 55 per cent, commercial is 23-24 per cent and the rest is domestic pumps.
Grundfos Holdings in Denmark is one of the world’s leading pump manufacturers with an annual production of more than 16 million pump units. Its wholly-owned India arm was established in 1998 in Chennai. It is responsible for sales of products in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Maldives.