Tech is important, but trust is key when working with rural communities: Veena Srinivasan, Founder, WELL Labs

Veena spoke to indianexpress.com on the need for building trust with local communities before introducing tech interventions, and for the need to have an ecosystem approach to solve the serious water challenges facing the country. Edited excerpts:

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Can you give us an overview of the work being done by WELL LABS and how well tech is integrated with the same?

Veena Srinivasan: We at WELL Labs call ourselves a systems transformation organisation because the intention is not to solve a single issue but to reshape the larger system that produces those issues.

We work in both rural and urban India. In rural areas, we deal with groundwater depletion, canal area and command area water issues, and irrigation challenges. In urban areas, we look at problems like wastewater management, flooding, and water distribution.

We do not work in isolation; everything we do is in partnership with others. We actively think about how to be an ecosystem builder and plug into what other organisations are doing, and how they can plug into us. That way, we are not just a single actor but part of a whole network of organisations tackling India’s water challenges.

As for tech, first, we use data, modelling, simulation, and visualisation to help communities plan their requirements. Secondly, we build platforms where stakeholders connect, share skills, and solve problems collectively. Thirdly, we design practical interventions like the “pipe-to-field” pilot in Raichur that test new ways of managing water. We also train communities to collect and interpret their own data, so that the monitoring and the ownership stay with them. And finally, we act as the bridge between communities, governments, and corporates, ensuring that the dialogue is continuous and transparent.

Tech runs across all of these initiatives – from remote sensing and modelling to apps for community data collection and open-source platforms that share information widely. But if there’s one lesson we have learned, it is that the hardest part is not the tech. The hardest part is trust: making sure communities actually want to use the tools, feel ownership over the data, and believe in the process. That’s why our role is as much about creating a community around technology as it is about deploying technology itself.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about Jaltol; what does it do, how it is being used, and what is the impact?

Veena Srinivasan: Jaltol was born out of a very practical problem: gram panchayats across the country were being asked to prepare water budgets and water security plans, but they did not have either the expertise or the data to do so. We realised that the budgets being submitted often failed even basic scientific checks. They did not add up, they didn’t balance, and they were not realistic.

The idea of Jaltol was to create a set of open data layers and make them accessible through an online platform. The idea was that anyone from a nonprofit, a local body, or even a researcher should be able to upload their watershed or sub-basin and immediately download the relevant rainfall, land use, groundwater, and soil data they need. This would overcome both the expertise bottleneck and the “data bottleneck.”

Water budgeting is never simple. Different data sources don’t always align. Rainfall data comes from the IMD, land use data comes from remote sensing, and abstraction data comes from yet another source. The left-hand side of the water balance rarely matches the right-hand side. That is a fundamental limitation.

Over time, we shifted Jaltol’s focus. Today, one of its most valuable uses is for impact assessment. Let us say you intervene in a watershed to improve soil moisture. Jaltol allows you to compare the treated watershed against a control watershed, one with similar characteristics but without the intervention, and track changes before and after. That way, you can actually see whether the intervention moved the needle.

The data layers are still open and can be used for planning or research. But our roadmap is bigger. We want tools like Jaltol to be part of an end-to-end process: to identify the problem, design the right interventions, monitor progress, and evaluate impact. That way, water security planning stops being guesswork and starts being evidence-based.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: What are the other tech tools or digital projects you are working on?

Veena Srinivasan: There are two big platforms we are involved in. The first is the India Research Corps platform. Every year, thousands of students write master’s theses. Many of them are theoretical and at times repetitive. Meanwhile, governments and grassroots organisations often come to us with specific questions like: if we transfer funds directly to water user cooperatives, do they manage irrigation better than the irrigation department? These are practical questions that could change policy, but there is no research bandwidth to answer them.

The India Research Corps platform matches those two sides. We curate the questions, structure the research design, and then pair students with agencies that need the answers. We also build students’ capacity because they often come from an education system that gives importance to rote learning over creative problem-solving. Through this platform, their research becomes genuinely useful.

The second is the Green Rural Economy platform. Here, the challenge is different. Grassroots organisations often face practical problems; solid waste piling up in villages, erosion control, salination, but they don’t have the technical expertise to solve them. Meanwhile, there are organisations that do have that expertise. This platform connects them. We host “clinics” where organisations with questions meet those with answers. We also build “playbooks” that document what works, so that knowledge is not lost.

Both platforms use tech as an enabler of scale. Without a platform, we would be handholding one case at a time. With a platform, we can enable hundreds of connections simultaneously. That is what technology allows us to do.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about your Urban water programme.

Veena Srinivasan: In cities, our focus has been on wastewater, flooding, and water distribution. Urban water issues are complicated because you have multiple agencies, private actors, and communities overlapping. What we have tried to do is bring transparency through open data.

We have collaborated with IIT Delhi and others to build open data layers and tools that corporates, donors, and NGOs can use. For example, a corporate may want to become water neutral. Inside the factory fence, that’s simple: recycle, reduce, recharge. But outside the fence, when you work on common lands or community water bodies, it is not easy. Our tools allow them to measure whether those outside-the-fence interventions are genuinely improving water security.

Another aspect is community-led monitoring. We train local communities to collect and interpret their own data. That way, they’re not passive recipients of ‘expert knowledge’ but active players. This builds trust because the community itself can say, “We recharged this much, we saved this much.”

Tech like remote sensing, dashboards, and mobile apps are all important. But the real innovation is putting the data in people’s hands. That shifts ownership, creates accountability, and ultimately makes solutions more sustainable.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about your rural futures programme.

Veena Srinivasan: Rural futures is about giving farmers real control over water. One of our flagship examples is the “pipe-to-field” pilot in Raichur. Traditionally, water flows through open canals. Head-end farmers get too much, tail-end farmers get almost nothing, and even the head-end farmers are unhappy because their land gets waterlogged.

We worked with them to pilot a pipeline system. Instead of water flowing through canals, it’s piped directly to fields. Farmers formed cooperatives, maintained the pipelines, collected data on water demand, and negotiated with the irrigation department for releases. That gave them actual control, and with control came the ability to diversify into higher-value crops.

Our role was knowledge management and capacity building — training farmers in water budgeting, in interpreting data, and in engaging with the government. That model of grassroots ownership is critical.

Rural futures is not one programme; it’s a way of thinking. It’s about shifting farmers from subsistence to resilience, from being passive recipients of water to active managers of it.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about WISER and how it is used to track water security.

Veena Srinivasan: WISER stands for Water Index for Sustainability, Equity, and Resilience, a science-based framework for monitoring water security across India.

WISER gives communities, governments, and corporates a clear, shared set of metrics to track progress. It brings together rainfall, groundwater levels, usage, and soil moisture into a single framework.

Why does this matter? Because water security is multi-dimensional. If you only look at rainfall, you miss groundwater depletion. If you only look at groundwater, you miss surface water flows. WISER integrates all of it.

The real value is in transparency. When indicators are open and clear, communities can see for themselves whether interventions are working. They are not dependent on an external consultant to tell them. That builds trust, accountability, and ownership. And for corporates and governments, it provides evidence that their investments are making a real difference.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about your transformation labs and the innovations that have come out of the same?

Veena Srinivasan: Transformation labs are our way of experimenting in partnership with communities. They are spaces where we co-design interventions, test them, and learn from them.

The Raichur pipe-to-field pilot is one innovation that emerged from a lab. Others include forming water user cooperatives, trying participatory irrigation budgeting, and experimenting with corporate-community partnerships for water neutrality.

What is important is that innovation is often not just technological. It is institutional. A new governance arrangement, a new way of sharing data, a new form of cooperation. These are as transformative as any gadget. By testing them in labs, we can refine them before scaling.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Can you give an overview of the tech tools being used to monitor water issues?

Veena Srinivasan: We use a wide suite of tools. Remote sensing to track land use and soil moisture, simulation models to forecast demand and supply, open data platforms like Jaltol to provide baseline information, mobile apps to let communities collect data in the field, and dashboards to aggregate and visualise it.

But the most important part is that the data loop closes at the community level. Farmers or villagers collect data, interpret it, and use it in their decision-making. That makes the data meaningful. And it creates a transparent interface with government and corporates — everyone can see the same numbers, reducing conflict.

Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about water startups that have impressed you.

Veena Srinivasan: There are startups working on what’s broadly called corporate water stewardship. These startups support companies with both “inside the fence” savings (reducing water use within their operations) and “outside the fence” projects (like lake rejuvenation), often driven by new reporting requirements.

There is Fluxgen, a Bengaluru-based startup that works in helping corporates manage water internally and also invest responsibly in external projects. What’s interesting is that they have built on some of the frameworks we at WELL Labs created. For example, standards for rejuvenating lakes. Fluxgen layered software and automation on top: they developed an autonomous boat that collects water samples, takes photos of lake structures, and maps everything against our lake-rejuvenation checklist. It makes verification far more efficient.

Globally, you see similar startups focusing mainly on certification. These startups are helping corporates track their water use, stewardship, and replenishment efforts, a bit like how carbon credits work, but for water. Big tech firms that are setting up large data centres are very sensitive about their water footprint.

The second category is in the wastewater space. Cities like Bengaluru are unique — there are about 3,500 sewage treatment plants here. Many of these were originally built by developers just to get approvals, maintained for a few years, and then handed over to residents’ welfare associations (RWAs). This has created space for operators who either take up annual maintenance contracts or refurbish and correct failing STPs. Greentivity is one such example; they manage nearly a hundred private STPs. Another is Transwater, which takes treated sewage water, processes it, and sells it to factories or construction companies. This helps industries shift away from fresh water use, which is often legally restricted or socially contested. In fact, governments have mandated that construction should not use fresh water.

The third category is water quality testing and monitoring. Traditionally, you had to send water samples to a lab and wait 24 hours for results. For heavy metals, tests could be very expensive and slow. Now, new players are developing real-time, low-cost testing.

One promising company is Segura Water, based in the UK. They’re using new tech to identify heavy metals, and the results are surprisingly accurate.

Why does this matter in India? Because so far, water quality testing has been sporadic. But with growing reuse of wastewater, the demand for continuous testing is also growing. I expect the testing market to also expand significantly in the coming years.