An impact update from Nairobi, where the very first SmartLife store is opening its doors.

Last week, my IDEO.org team had a chance to visit the SmartLife store in the Nairobi neighborhood of Rongai, the very first pilot location that came out of an IDEO.org project last spring with Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP), Unilever, Aqua for All, and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). As part of last year's project, the IDEO.org team created a social enterprise combining the sale of pure drinking water with wellness products such as vitamins for children. After nine months of hard work, and with many twists and turns along the way, the SmartLife store is set to open this week. Here are a few details on what the pilot will look like.

Where does the clean drinking water come from?

The water at the SmartLife store comes from two different locations. The store has a connection to the local water utility supply which it tries to use predominantly as its cheaper than their back-up, a local borehole (aka, well). Having two water supplies (and a 5,000 liter storage tank on the roof of the store) guards against any potential water shortages. In the case of both water sources, the water is pumped into the SmartLife store and then filtered using a water filtration system that the SmartLife staff proudly showed off to our IDEO.org team, including glasses of fresh and clean drinking water for everyone. The water filtration system can supply 10 liters of clean drinking water for every four liters of wastewater it produces. And what happens to this extra water that can't be drunk? SmartLife has teamed up with a local carwash that sits directly behind the store and gladly gives the wastewater a second life. 

Where does the clean drinking water go?

SmartLife will sell its clean drinking water in ten liter returnable bottles. The SmartLife team will experiment with various distribution models over the coming months, but the plan at this point is to sell the water as part of a subscription model where families can elect to receive regular water deliveries (say, every Tuesday afternoon) or can instead text the SmartLife store when they need a one-off refill of drinking water. The SmartLife water will be distributed in the Rongai community via mkokoteni deliverymen (carts pulled by hand or by donkey). Currently, these local mkokoteni men have delivery routes for other companies in the area (including competing water delivery routes), but tend to finish their deliveries by lunchtime. SmartLife plans to hire some of the mkokoteni deliverymen who wish to pick up extra delivery routes (and money) in the afternoon. A major benefit of using existing mkokoteni deliverymen is that they already know the complicated (and previously unmapped) street pattern of Rongai. 

You said Rongai was previously unmapped? What changed? 

After choosing Rongai for the location of the first SmartLife store, the SmartLife team set about creating a map of every street and building in the community so as to get a better understanding both of the potential market size for SmartLife water and potential delivery routes. SmartLife hired a cartographer who spent three days walking the streets of Rongai, taking photographs and marking down each building on a giant poster printout of a Google map, which previously had virtually no detail at all (or, the details it had were often wrong). After some initial hiccups (the cartographer originally estimated a population of only 8,000 households within the vicinity of the store, before the team realized that he had only mapped one kilometer around the SmartLife store instead of the three kilometers he was supposed to), SmartLife now has the first ever detailed map of Rongai and a potential market of 15 - 20,000 households within the delivery zone for SmartLife water. 

How will people pay for SmartLife water? 

SmartLife will encourage its customers to pay for their water via cellphone payments utilizing M-Pesa or a similar system from competing cellphone companies, a form of payment that millions and millions of Kenyans use each week. SmartLife will also use KopoKopo, a startup based out of the iHub in Nairobi which has launched a service layer on top of the M-Pesa system that allows customers to make payments for their SmartLife water without a transaction fee (which will be billed to SmartLife instead).

How much will SmartLife cost?

SmartLife will initially charge 120 Kenyan Shillings (KSH) per ten liters of delivered water or 100KSH if a customer picks it up from the store themselves. One of the many things that SmartLife will learn as part of the pilot over the next few months is how much customers are willing to pay for clean drinking water in Rongai. Currently, there are competitors in the neighborhood charging 150 - 220 Kenyan Shillings per ten liters of drinking water. SmartLife anticipates that it can provide clean drinking water for substantially less, but will also be experimenting with marketing promotions such as dispensing a free ten-liter jerry can when a customer signs up for a monthly clean water subscription service. SmartLife will also be evaluating pilot data it receives over the next few months in hopes of being able to offer more sophisticated subscription packages at lower prices in the future.

Who works for SmartLife?

During our visit to the SmartLife store in Rongai, we met Tyler Goodwin and Jack O'Regan who have spent the last six months making the first SmartLife store a reality. From identifying the original neighborhood for the store to scouting out boreholes in crowded urban communities to negotiating Kenyan real estate deals, Jack and Tyler are very much like proud parents waiting to bring their first SmartLife store into the world! Jack and Tyler are joined on the SmartLife team by Jackson Mwendwa, with training as an industrial designer and who is the water technician at the store responsible for ensuring that SmartLife water stays pure and delicious, and Joyce Mukami, who serves as the SmartLife store manager responsible for overall store performance as well as customer service and the customer experience at the new SmartLife store.

What's next for SmartLife?

First things first, SmartLife is launching this month and will target obtaining 500 families in Rongai as customers over the next six to nine months. SmartLife has plans to open a second store in the near future, with expansion ultimately to ten to fifteen SmartLife stores around Nairobi. Additionally, when the IDEO.org team originally tackled the SmartLife project, it envisioned a social enterprise providing both clean drinking water and nutrition products for kids and adults. Once the SmartLife store in Rongai has perfected the process of delivering safe, trusted drinking water to the residents of the community, the team will look to work in the nutrition piece of the IDEO.org design. For now, the SmartLife team is smartly taking the pilot one step at a time.

--Sean Hewens, IDEO.org Knowledge Manager