| Motivation, Goals, and Ideal World |
I started out by studying Southeast Asian religious culture at university and graduate school, but the more I learned about the situation there, the more I realized that infrastructure outside of urban areas was still inadequate and many people had problems with sanitation.
Because I studied cultural anthropology at university, a subject closely related to development, I was originally interested in development in Southeast Asia and Africa, and I also thought about working in that field in the future, so I gradually began to want to be involved in the field. On the other hand, I personally felt that there were limitations on the budget, time, and scope of involvement when joining national projects or other companies, and I was hesitant to get a job. Also, at the time, I had heard from people around me that there was also the option of starting a business, and I was starting to think that this was a good option.
However, development requires specialized knowledge and technology to discover and solve the problems in the area. Since I lacked both, I was very worried about how I could get involved. At that time, I had an extracurricular class on entrepreneurship at university, and that's where I met Watanabe, who was researching wastewater treatment in a doctoral program.
When you live in Japan, you take for granted that water sanitation and water-related home facilities are clean, but this is not the case at all when you go to developing countries. Wastewater is often discharged without being treated, polluting rivers, oceans, and soil. Also, home facilities, especially toilets, are not very clean by Japanese standards. I myself like going abroad, but I have never had a good impression of the water sanitation environment, so I felt a sense of crisis about water sanitation and wanted to do something about it.
Also, when I was studying cultural anthropology, I knew from literature several cases where water facilities were built but not operated properly, and even if Japan invested in them, they ended up not being used, so I wanted to be involved not only in the facilities themselves but also in their operation.
In the midst of all this, I heard from Watanabe, an expert in the field, that he had researched and developed wastewater treatment facilities and their operation, and had the technology, but did not know how to implement it in society. We hit it off and decided to start a company, as we both felt that we could help each other with what we couldn't do.
Our goal is to purify water in the natural environment, thereby expanding people's access to safe water and eliminating losses such as disease and infant deaths caused by unsanitation. |
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Miki Omori