A Pilot Funding & Innovation Learning Platform

This World Bank-supported initiative creates new opportunities for piloting solutions with water and wastewater service providers across the Asia-Pacific.

Our innovators need support to test and validate their solutions in new markets across South and Southeast Asia. But utility and industrial customers may lack the resources to fund pilot projects. In collaboration with the World Bank Water Global Practice, WTAP aims to make innovation more accessible by providing the resources to jumpstart these collaborations. 

The program provides support to identify and localize relevant solutions, co-fund demonstration projects, and document and share findings globally to inspire wider replication. From reducing utility losses in small urban systems in Cambodia to mapping arsenic-contaminated groundwater in South Asia, WTAP sources technologies across a range of challenges affecting the region. 

We invite new partners to join as we deepen our engagement in Asia and expand our reach to new geographies.

Environsens and SpaceAge Labs found each other through Imagine H2O Asia’s inaugural cohort, during the program’s startup bootcamp. As fellow Singaporean companies, they saw a potential collaboration: a combined solution to tackle the industrial discharge of heavy metals in Singapore’s sewage systems.

While Environsens’ biosensor could effectively monitor toxicity levels, it was unable to aggregate and transmit that data across multiple assets. SpaceAge Labs offered a low-power, wireless communications and analytics platform that could enable Environsens and PUB, Singapore’s National Water Agency, to view data in real-time. By improving the efficiency of wastewater monitoring and surveillance, Environsens and SpaceAge Labs were able to save the utility both time and money. At the same time, they protected Singapore’s waterways from toxic industrial discharge. The companies have installed 100+ joint systems across Singapore to date, with an additional 75 to be installed in the coming year.

When SmartTerra joined Imagine H2O Asia’s second cohort, their pilot projects—examining the root causes of non-revenue water—had been limited to utilities in India. They knew that neighboring markets needed a cost-effective solution to the same problem. South Asian utilities were struggling to tackle water leaks, under-registering meters, unauthorized consumption, and other drivers of non-revenue water—all of which resulted in losses as high as 50% in some cities in the region. 

Though these utilities had increasing access to data, they needed help using it to boost revenue. Within the first three months, IH2O Asia’s team and network of in-country advisors helped SmartTerra secure its first project with a Philippines utility. The project’s first phase analyzed the operator’s 15,000 connections.