Wastewater Treatment Startup Raises Funding To Expand To New Verticals

Singapore-based Hydroleap has secured SG$2.6M funding led by Wavemaker Partners.

• -Participating investors include Seeds Capital, 500 Startups’ Southeast Asia focused 500 Durians fund and more
• -Currently the startup provides end-to-end solutions at construction sites while expanding to new verticals in the mining, palm oil and semiconductor industries
• -The startup’s technology is overall 3X cheaper and 2X smaller than incumbent technologies

SINGAPORE, 25 November 2019 – Hydroleap, a Singapore-based wastewater treatment startup has secured a SG$2.6M round of funding led by Wavemaker Partners. Joining in the round were Seeds Capital, 500 Startups’ Southeast Asia focused 500 Durians fund and more. The startup’s tech currently provides end-to-end solutions at construction sites and is in the midst of expanding to new verticals in the mining, palm oil and semiconductor industries.

Founded by Dr. Mohammad Sherafatmand, the startup provides a chemical-free, cost-effective, and environmentally-friendly solution for wastewater treatment by replacing chemicals with electricity. Dr. Moh received his PhD from the National University of Singapore in environmental engineering specializing in using electrochemical methods for the treatment of wastewater and contaminated-soil.

In the construction industry, runoff silty water is treated before disposal. Currently, wastewater(s) are treated by adding chemicals (coagulant and flocculants) to the water. The process causes irreversible financial and environmental impact. Hydroleap’s solution of using electricity to treat the water is overall 3X cheaper and 2X smaller than incumbent technologies.

The company offers an environmentally friendly and cost-effective pre-treatment solution based on running electricity through metal plates and creating in-situ coagulants. Hydroleap has established relationships with ceramic membrane companies and thus, has commercialized a unique and end-to-end integrated electrical and filtration system.

“Through electrochemistry research, Dr. Moh has developed and commercialized an electrocoagulation system. In fact, competitors from the US and Europe lag behind in efficiency compared with Hydroleap’s inbuilt proprietary mechanism. Hydroleap’s beachhead market is in construction and enjoys a strong pipeline of projects. We are proud to journey with Hydroleap to deploy three thousand systems in Singapore alone. We firmly believe Hydroleap is an example of a defensible and sizeable company from Southeast Asia,” said Paul Santos, Managing Partner of Wavemaker Partners.

“Hydroleap’s technology is a win-win solution to the significant financial and environmental damage wastewater treatment involves. It empowers industry with a cheaper, faster and easily deployable electrocoagulation system that outperforms the status quo. At the same time it is significantly more environmentally friendly by removing the necessity for harmful chemicals in the process. It is a groundbreaking step in dealing with the over 600 billion cubic metres of wastewater generated every year” added Vishal Harnal, General Partner at 500 Startups.

The startup has passed early stage validation via prior funding raised from SGInnovate, Sparklabs Cultiv8, Sparklabs Global Ventures and Entrepreneur First where they tested their technology with various wastewater industries including construction, tannery, food and beverage, palm oil, and highly-contaminated wastewater.

Hydroleap has now successfully progressed from lab to full-blown commercialization. With this new round, the company plans to take its proprietary technology to industrial parks, mining, palm oil and semiconductor industries by removing suspended solids, heavy metals, hardness and COD from their wastewater.

“We are very excited by the progress Hydroleap continues to make in addressing challenges around the effective industrial use of our most important resource, water. Moh and his team continue to build opportunities in a range of sectors and we look forward to continuing to work with them as they shift in to the mining industry in Australia.” said Jonathon Quigley, Managing Partner of Sparklabs Cultiv8.

With this new round, Hydroleap aspires to help more industries to save dollars and move one step closer to sustainability.