In this BlueTech forum interview, Waterworld magazine host Angela Godwin speaks with Venky Sharma, CEO of Aquatech Vanke, about the pressing water and wastewater challenges facing industrial end users. Sharma highlights the drive toward a circular economy—moving from reduction to reuse and recycling—and the aggressive sustainability targets that compel industries to tackle issues such as minimal or zero liquid discharge, brine management, and contaminant removal under evolving regulatory pressures. He emphasizes that technology must deliver tangible value, primarily through reduced total cost of ownership, and describes Aquatech Vanke’s holistic total‑water‑management approach, which integrates water purification, chemical management, operational expertise, and digital platforms, often in partnership with firms like Ecolab. The conversation underscores the importance of listening to end‑user needs at forums like BlueTech to co‑create innovative, cost‑effective solutions for the water sector.
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Hi, I'm Angela Godwin with Waterworld magazine coming to you from the BlueTech forum here in Vancouver, Canada. Joining me today is my guest, Venky Sharma. He is the CEO of Aquatech Vanke. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you Angela, for the opportunity.
Now I know this year at the forum you are going to be leading the end user session. What are some of the topics you think you're going to be?
I think a lot of the topics are around the circular economy and some of the challenges faced by these very important end users. They have some very aggressive goals around sustainability and areas like some wastewater challenges they face, how to maximize, reuse and ultimately how to deal with the brines that are resultant. So we're excited to spend time listening to them and understanding and I think the participants at BlueTech will be able to come up with some really good and innovative solutions for some of their needs. So first listen and see how we can innovate through some of the technology companies that are here at the forum.
Excellent. Speaking of those challenges, you know the industrial sector of the water market is one of the fastest growing segments and you did mention some of the challenge, but is there anything spec specific to the industrial sector that stands out to you as something that they're needing to solve?
I think that the drive towards going progressively towards a circular economy where you're moving from reduce to reuse to recycle, is one of the things that are challenges for almost all industrial end users and how that journey happens and the challenges they face, including things like minimal liquid discharge, eventually zero liquid discharge. What you do with the brine, as far as brine management, certain contaminant removal depending on discharge limitations that are posed. So there are a wide array of. And the landscape keeps changing, both with regulations as well as their processes that start introducing challenges and how to deal with them. So we're not without challenges in water.
Sure, that's for sure. So let me ask you about technology and innovation, which is a recurring theme at the BlueTech forum. What role does that play? How do you see that helping with these challenges and addressing them?
The way we view technology is it has to deliver a value and a savings ultimately in things like total cost of ownership, ability to drive down the cost of what the customer wants to do and that's what makes a technology valuable. And you know, we're always very much, you know, total installed cost is always important and it's a pain point. But ultimately most clients are more sophisticated as well and they look at total cost of ownership over 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. And that's where holistic solutions and progressively complete solutions. In conjunction with Ecolab, we are focused on total water management. So we provide a very complete holistic solution which incorporates technologies for water purification, but also chemical management as well as operations, and all on a digital platform. So I think holistic solutions, deploying technology are extremely important.
Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you. We really appreciate your insights today. And thank you very much for joining us.
