India is in the middle of a water crisis that most people are not fully aware of. Despite being home to 18% of the world’s population, India has access to just 4% of the world’s freshwater resources. Nearly 40% of Indians lack access to safe drinking water, and 70% of the country’s surface water is polluted. The water and wastewater treatment market in India is currently valued at approximately $11 billion and is projected to surpass $18 billion by 2026 — making it one of the fastest-growing environmental sectors in the country.
The Indian government has also stepped in with major funding. The Jal Jeevan Mission alone carries a budget of ₹3.6 lakh crore aimed at delivering piped water to every rural household. The AMRUT 2.0 scheme, the National Mission for Clean Ganga, and strict Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) norms have together created a structural demand surge for water technology companies.
So who is actually solving this problem? Here are the top 10 water tech companies in India in 2026 — a mix of large publicly listed corporations, mid-size engineering firms, and innovative startups — all actively operating and making a measurable impact.
1. VA Tech WABAG Ltd
Founded: 1924 (India operations since 1995) | HQ: Chennai | Listed: NSE (WABAG)
VA Tech WABAG is India’s largest and most globally recognized pure-play water treatment company. It specializes in designing, building, and operating water and wastewater treatment plants for both municipal and industrial clients, with a portfolio that spans seawater desalination, sludge treatment, drinking water treatment, and wastewater recycling.
The scale of WABAG’s operations is hard to match. The company has completed over 6,500 projects worldwide and operates in more than 25 countries across 4 continents, with approximately 40% of its revenues coming from international markets — including major projects in the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. As of early 2026, WABAG carries an order book exceeding ₹12,000 crore. For Q3 FY 2024-25, the company reported a consolidated net profit of ₹70.2 crore, marking an 11.6% year-on-year increase. Its current market price trades around ₹1,250 per share.
WABAG is widely considered the anchor stock in India’s water treatment sector — the benchmark against which every other player is measured.
2. Ion Exchange (India) Ltd
Founded: 1964 | HQ: Mumbai | Listed: NSE (IONEXCHANG)
Ion Exchange is one of India’s oldest and most established water and environmental management companies, with over six decades of operational history. It offers a comprehensive suite of services that covers water purification, wastewater treatment, ion exchange resins, specialty chemicals, and solid waste management — making it one of the few genuinely full-spectrum water companies in the country.
The company’s technology is deployed across power plants, pharmaceutical manufacturing units, food and beverage facilities, and municipal infrastructure. Ion Exchange’s strength lies in its deep technology base — particularly its ion exchange resin technology, which is used in some of the most demanding industrial water treatment applications. Its current market price trades around ₹700 per share, and it continues to benefit from strong industrial demand for water recycling solutions.
3. Thermax Ltd
Founded: 1966 | HQ: Pune | Listed: NSE (THERMAX)
Thermax is primarily known as an energy and environment solutions company, but its water and environment division is one of the most significant in the country. The company designs and builds water treatment plants for both municipal and industrial clients, with a particular specialization in Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) systems — a technology that has become critically important as CPCB tightens effluent norms across sectors.
Thermax’s financial scale is substantial. For Q3 FY 2024-25, the company reported a consolidated operating revenue of ₹2,508 crore, marking 8% year-on-year growth. Its water division handles everything from effluent treatment and sewage treatment to desalination and the removal of specific industrial chemicals from wastewater. Thermax is particularly strong in the textile, chemicals, and pharmaceutical sectors — industries facing the strictest ZLD compliance requirements.
4. Piramal Sarvajal
Founded: 2008 | HQ: Ahmedabad | Type: Social enterprise (Piramal Group)
Piramal Sarvajal occupies a unique position in this list — it is not a capital markets play, but a mission-driven water access enterprise backed by the Piramal Group. Sarvajal operates a network of over 1,965 water purification touchpoints across 20 Indian states, reaching over 7,65,000 consumers daily through solar-powered, cloud-connected, RFID-based water vending machines that deliver purified water at affordable prices to underserved communities.
The technology is genuinely innovative: each vending machine is remotely monitored through IoT-enabled sensors that track water quality, usage volumes, and machine performance in real time — allowing Sarvajal to maintain quality at scale without deploying human operators at every point. The company has partnered with NITI Aayog and the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation to support the government’s Swajal scheme across 16 aspirational districts in 7 states. For communities in rural India, Sarvajal is often the only reliable source of safe water.
5. DrinkPrime
Founded: 2016 | HQ: Bengaluru | Stage: Series A
DrinkPrime has pioneered a subscription-based model for water purification that is specifically designed for urban Indian households. Rather than selling a water purifier outright — a significant one-time investment — DrinkPrime offers IoT-enabled purifiers on a monthly subscription starting at affordable price points, handling all maintenance, filter replacements, and service as part of the plan.
The numbers indicate strong traction. DrinkPrime has raised a total of $18 million in funding from investors including 100Unicorns, Alteria Capital, and Surge (Sequoia’s growth programme). In March 2026, the company raised a further ₹20 crore from Artha Venture Fund. Its annual revenue stood at ₹75.1 crore for FY 2024-25, with 287 employees as of August 2025 — reflecting 11% year-on-year headcount growth. The company’s IoT platform enables real-time water quality monitoring, usage tracking, and predictive maintenance — features that traditional purifier companies do not offer.
6. Uravu Labs
Founded: 2019 | HQ: Bengaluru | Stage: Seed/Growth
Uravu Labs is arguably the most innovative deep-tech water company on this list. The company has developed a technology that extracts clean drinking water directly from atmospheric moisture — using proprietary liquid desiccant systems powered entirely by renewable energy sources such as solar, biomass, and industrial waste heat. No groundwater. No pipelines. Just air.
The company’s core product, the FromAir system, has already delivered over 1 million units of packaged drinking water, with over 80 brands and 100 outlets in Bangalore using it as a sustainable alternative to plastic-bottled water. Uravu has also conserved over 2 lakh litres of groundwater since inception. Its modular, scalable systems are deployed in the hospitality and beverage sectors, with expansion planned into pharmaceuticals, data centres, and rural water-stressed communities. Uravu is exploring partnerships with the World Bank and the Ministry of Jal Shakti for rural deployment. Total funding stands at $2 million, with its most recent round from Enrission India Capital in 2025.
7. Swajal Water Private Limited
Founded: 2014 | HQ: Gurugram | Status: Active (MCA confirmed)
Swajal has built one of India’s largest solar-powered water ATM networks, with over 500 water ATMs installed across India that collectively supply millions of litres of safe drinking water while significantly reducing plastic waste. The startup focuses on the drinking water needs of the bottom of the pyramid — deploying affordable, solar-powered purification systems in schools, bus stops, railway stations, religious places, and public spaces.
Swajal’s revenue for FY 2024-25 stood at ₹30.7 crore, with a 21% compounded annual growth rate. The company manufactures its own systems locally, allowing tight quality control and faster product iteration. Its product range includes Water ATMs, RO systems with chillers, solar-based water ATMs, and solar pumps — all designed for high-footfall public environments where consistent access to clean water matters most. The company has raised over $2.8 million in total funding.
8. Thermax’s Competitor in Industrial ZLD: Netsol Water Solutions
Founded: 2012 | HQ: Greater Noida | Type: Private
Netsol Water Solutions has carved a specific niche in India’s industrial water treatment market — focusing on Effluent Treatment Plants (ETPs), Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs), and Zero Liquid Discharge systems for small and medium industrial clients who cannot afford the large-cap EPC firms. The company provides end-to-end services from design and installation to operation and maintenance, and has completed projects across textile, dairy, food processing, and pharmaceutical sectors.
Netsol is particularly relevant in the current regulatory environment, where CPCB compliance deadlines are pushing thousands of industrial units to install treatment infrastructure for the first time. The company also runs a YouTube-based awareness and education platform for water treatment professionals, which has built it a community of practitioners across India.
9. EMS Ltd
Founded: 2002 | HQ: Kerala | Listed: BSE/NSE**
EMS Ltd is the fastest-growing municipal water infrastructure EPC company in India, specializing in water supply schemes, sewage treatment plants, and underground drainage systems for urban local bodies and state governments. The company benefits directly from the Jal Jeevan Mission and AMRUT 2.0 — two government programmes that together represent hundreds of thousands of crores in infrastructure spending.
EMS has a strong order book driven by government contracts across southern and central India, and its focused positioning in municipal water infrastructure (as opposed to industrial water) gives it an exposure that is directly correlated with government capex cycles. It is considered one of the highest-growth plays in the listed water infrastructure space in India in 2026.
10. Planys Technologies
Founded: 2015 | HQ: Chennai | Stage: Growth**
Planys Technologies occupies a unique position in the water tech ecosystem — it uses remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) and advanced robotics to inspect underwater infrastructure such as water pipelines, dam walls, bridge foundations, and coastal structures. This is a problem that has historically required expensive, dangerous human diving operations or simply went uninspected.
Planys has been identified by Tracxn as one of the top water and wastewater management tech startups in India as of January 2026. Its technology is relevant not just for new water infrastructure but for the enormous task of maintaining and assessing the condition of India’s ageing water infrastructure — pipelines that have been in service for decades, dams that have never been inspected from the inside, and coastal intake structures that feed municipal water supply systems.
The Bigger Picture: Why This Sector Matters in 2026
India’s water sector is at an inflection point. The combination of government policy funding (Jal Jeevan Mission’s ₹3.6 lakh crore, AMRUT 2.0, NMCG), tightening industrial regulations under the Environment Protection Act, and genuine technological innovation from startups across atmospheric water generation, IoT-enabled purification, and underwater robotics means this sector is both a public necessity and a growing economic opportunity.
The 10 companies listed above represent the breadth of that opportunity — from Chennai-listed global EPC giants executing ₹12,000 crore order books, to Bengaluru startups producing drinking water from thin air. What they share is active operations, proven technology, and relevance to the single biggest infrastructure challenge India faces in the coming decades: making sure its people have clean water to drink.
