Aquatech Amsterdam 2019 – PureTerra Ventures’ Key Takeaways

PureTerra Ventures (PTV) & participated at Aquatech Amsterdam 2019, Europe’s leading water & wastewater focused exhibition and trade show which took place on 4-8 October, 2019. In the same week also the Amsterdam International Water Week (AIWW) and the Aquatech Innovation forum took place. The focus of the conference and forum was on the crucial role of financing, valuing water, and implementation of Sustainable Development Goals.

Attending the exhibition and conference offered 98 Sparks & PureTerra Ventures many network opportunities with international water experts & leaders. We took this platform to share for the first time our ideas around rethinking the business model to accelerate the future of the water ecosystem.

Let’s take a look at the recap of some of our key takeaways from Aquatech Amsterdam 2019!

big believer: Catalyzing investment to solve global water challenges

Seeing the program as an ideal place to share ideas with like-minded & purpose-driven water experts, 98 Sparks Impact Director, Annelies Schenk joined the Innovation Forum on day 1. It started with a test between the ‘old generation’ and the Millennials. The millennials were more innovative and won the test.

After a fun game several serious theses were discussed one of them was: ‘Failure is an inevitable part of the creation process. Change is only possible when there is a crisis. Better to be the disruptor than the disrupted’. Annelies stood up and pointed out that change also starts when more awareness is created around a topic such as the water crisis. For example look at the change ‘plastic’ is going through now the public is so aware of it. Will Sarni came on top of this with a great quote: ‘You need the public sector to scale and entrepreneurs to fail’.

The forum in general received many valuable statements from key water actors like Benjamin Tam from Isle Utilities, and Rik Thijssen of Vitens, and Dragan Savric Feng from KWR. Most people in the room agreed that we need to break down the silo’s in water and more collaboration & knowledge sharing is needed.

Annelies said: “If I can give one critical note it would be the lack of presence of stakeholders outside the water sphere. Inspiring people such as Rebekah Eggers (Business Partner IBM) are needed to accelerate the future of the water ecosystem”. As 98 Sparks we believe in a network powered ecosystem to catalyze investment to solve global water challenges. Bringing organizations together inside and outside water to enable innovation, acquire capital and create awareness. Aquatech 2019 was definitely a great platform to further strengthen the network powered ecosystem and movement which we call WaterSpark. More information about this will be updated later.

 

PureTerra Ventures key takeaways from Aquatech Amsterdam 2019

The PureTerra Ventures team was impressed by the digitalization of the water sector. They saw the water-tech progression in many water companies, as well as, they updated with the latest cutting-edge water technology providers. Let’s find out what the key takeaways from Aquatech Amsterdam by PTV’s team are:

“The PureTerra team attended the Aquatech Amsterdam last week. This particular program traditionally offers a strong networking opportunity and we enjoyed the high level of this year’s attendees’’ – Alexander Crowell, Managing Director.

“The biggest takeaway for me was the normalisation of digital in the water industry. While the past years this was the domain of young, ambitious start-ups, we now see large players getting involved in a big way. I believe this trend will continue at an ever accelerating pace” – Maarten ter Keurst, Investment Director.

Moreover, Libin Song, Business Analyst, shared her comprehensive takeaway from the program, covering her thoughts on the trends and technologies she saw at the event.

She said: “More UV LED technologies are coming into the market, improved quality and reduced cost of LED chips is definitely the most important force driving the trend. Next step will be focused on the larger flow and longer life time of UV LED system. Additionally, most of the innovations at SWAN pavilion are about leak detection, including satellite technologies, EO technologies, AI that help optimize the entire solution, and of course hardware like SmartBall from Xylem. Accuracy, value proposition to utilities, and business model would be the key to success for leak detection companies. Moreover, hydro power technologies are less than I expected, scalability across countries is a big issue for large hydro power projects due to different energy regulations and prices; for small devices supplying power for sensors, improving battery life poses a threat. Lastly, good to see EU has many grant projects to help finance the innovations, doubling the investment for companies from EU level, also you may find country level policies subsidizing innovations.”

98 Sparks & PureTerra Ventures look forward to meeting water experts, as well as, seeing new advanced water solutions and technologies in the next Aquatech Amsterdam!