CHENNAI: Chandrasekharan, 47, Jayaraman(Chandra) is a social entrepreneur and a heritage conservationist at heart. Despite being written off as a `wandering maverick' by his family , two-time national awardee Chandrasekharan marches on with his mission to give back to society.

A plastic engineer from CIPET, Chennai, who works with Bahrain Fibre Glass in Mumbai, Chandrasekharan has journeyed through most of Tamil Nadu chasing his passion for heritage and troubleshooting social issues. After quitting his job in 2008, he set up custompartsonline.com to solve impediments faced by product innovators.His first project, a feeding bottle to replace breastfeeding, made of 100% recyclable plastic bagged an order for 10,000 pieces. This was validation of his decision to create a difference in the social arena.

A founder member of REACH foundation, Chandrasekharan's passion took him to one village after another in search for a temple to preserve or an ancient story to unravel, covering 800 villages in three years. During these trips, Chandra had to rely on bottled or packaged drinking water and this constraint sparked an idea. Why can poor not ha ve access to clean drinking water that is affordable, thought Chandra as he made up his mind to build an affordable water filter.

In October 2009, Chandra procured a licence from Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) to make clay candles in water filters. However, building filters at a scale that would create sizeable impact in the lives of the economically backward was still a distant dream.

Empowered by the knowledge handed by the potters, Chandra worked out the correct balance between clay , saw dust and sand to build candles that could be manufactured on a large scale.

Priced at `800, Chandra's filter requires minimal maintenance and can easily live up to 15 years, he says. Chandra has supplied over a lakh filters which have found their way to the homes of anganwadi workers and tribals in Tamil Nadu, primary health care centres in Assam and West Bengal.

His factory in Chengalpet has 12 potters who make candles through a process that has very little mechanisation.

We tested the water at a government institute and we know for sure that the filter does purify the water from bacteria while retaining essential minerals which no RO filter can do today," said S Natesan, director at Exnora, a Chennai-based NGO.

With no interest in commercialising the venture, Chandra said "I refuse to supply my filters to a retailer or a trader. My product is meant for the poor. Everybody else can buy it from me directly ."

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