EarthFokus Cooling Tower Water Recovery

EarthFokus is an Indian water-efficiency company built out of IIT Madras, whose founding story traces back to the Chennai water crisis of 2018. Led by founder and MD Arun Subramanian, it helps commercial buildings, campuses and factories cut freshwater use through audits, retrofits and monitoring, and reports more than 100 clients. In April 2026 it joined the seventh cohort of the Imagine H2O Asia accelerator.

Its cooling tower water recovery system is a retrofit: a passive mesh unit mounted above the cooling tower fan condenses moisture from the hot exhaust air, and the recovered water is filtered and returned to the system, reducing make-up water without affecting cooling performance. A Recovery Analytics module measures recovered volume and ROI. The company also sells Waterfokus retrofit kits for taps, showers and flush systems and WaterOS, a dashboard for flow, consumption trends, alerts and cross-site comparison. Clients shown include Amazon, Google, Hilton, JLL, CBRE and CapitaLand.

• Passive condensation mesh: mounted above the cooling tower fan to capture moisture from the exhaust plume.
• Filtration and reuse: recovered water is filtered and returned as cooling tower make-up water.
• Recovery Analytics: measures recovered water volume and return on investment.
• Waterfokus retrofit kits: aerators and fixtures for taps, showers and flush systems that fit without plumbing changes.
• WaterOS dashboard: centralised monitoring of flow, consumption trends, alerts, maintenance and automated reports.
• Smart water management service: audits, implementation and monitoring with guaranteed savings for buildings and factories.

Factories and data centres in Vietnamese industrial parks can retrofit cooling towers to reduce make-up water and wastewater fees. Office towers and malls pursuing LEED or LOTUS certification can combine fixture retrofit kits with WaterOS monitoring. Hotels and resorts can track water use across properties for ESG reporting.

Cooling towers can recover part of their evaporative losses, and the company cites more than 10 million litres recovered annually and a 40% reduction in water loss. The passive retrofit requires no change to the cooling process. Fixture retrofit kits claim up to 70% lower fixture water use without pressure loss, and a JLL India testimonial reports a 30% reduction in water consumption. Dashboards support LEED, IGBC and ESG reporting.

Cooling towers are among the largest water users in data centres, factories and commercial buildings across hot Asian cities, and evaporative losses grow as AI and manufacturing loads rise. Corporate water stewardship targets and green building certification are pushing facility managers to adopt retrofits that cut freshwater intake without major capital works.

EarthFokus was built out of IIT Madras and traces its origin to the 2018 Chennai water crisis; the website does not state a formal founding date or legal entity. Awards listed include NASSCOM Emerge 50 Climate Tech winner and HDFC Parivartan Grants winner, and finalist places at Cityscape Climate Challenge and KPMG GTIC India. It was selected for Imagine H2O Asia Cohort 7 in April 2026.