THE REMARKABLE RIPPLE EFFECT OF TOILET ACCESS

This series of articles showcases our 2025 Impact Awardees. The Impact Awards are dedicated to former Cartier Women's Initiative Fellows who have achieved extraordinary impact. Each of these nine exceptional women impact entrepreneurs has an inspiring story to tell about her journey to success.

This is the story of Namita Banka, a 2013 fellow and 2025 Impact Awardee.

Since Namita Banka joined our community in 2013, what she calls “India's journey of social transformation” has progressed significantly — and her innovative biotoilets have played a vital role.

“We had an idea for a solution, then we proved it worked. However, I knew I couldn’t tackle open defecation and lack of access to sanitation facilities by myself.” At that point, an estimated 100 million households in India lacked access to toilets and 60% of people were forced to defecate in the open, creating health hazards and leading to water contamination. Now, open defecation is almost eliminated.

“I knew I needed thousands of soldiers like me working towards this huge goal of improving toilet access.”

A simple but impactful solution

Back in 2008, a role selling office supplies to businesses including Indian Railways made Namita aware of the scale of the train company’s sanitation issue — it was serving around 20 million people each day but had very few toilets. The toilets it did have were discharged straight onto the track.

It took several years of iteration, but Namita hit on a solution. She harnessed biodigester technology to create biotoilets that need very little maintenance. This approach turns a negative environmental impact into a positive one by converting human waste into useful byproducts. The biodigesting bacteria “eat away” human waste, leaving biogas that can be used for fuel and gray water that can be reused for gardening.

Fast forward to 2025 and Banka Bio has installed 3,000 biotoilets for Indian Railways and supplied 30,000 biotoilets to rural areas, including 1,500 in schools. This positively impacts millions of people by providing them with a cleaner environment and a safe, hygienic place to take care of their needs. Pictures of newly installed biotoilets and clean water regularly pop into Namita’s WhatsApp inbox, taken by happy customers or one of her 1,000 employees.

She enthuses: “The ripple effect of our solution is clear — I have seen whole communities transform thanks to access to toilets and clean water. Eradicating open defecation has completely changed this country.”

Namita is not alone in tackling this challenge, but she is among the most successful. In 2018, Banka Bio became the first publicly listed sanitation company in India. The business’s growth and success has enabled her to invest in new technology and provide sanitation facilities to more and more people.

The force of life

In India, water is sacred. Namita describes it as the “force of life — if you must, you can go without food, you can go without electricity. You cannot go without water.”

Since Namita joined the Cartier Women’s Initiative, her business’s core services have diversified and its name has changed — from Banka Bioloo to simply Banka Bio. However, water remains her passion, and the business still focuses on sustainable water-related infrastructure solutions, just with a broader scope. Beyond biotoilets, Banka Bio also specializes in sewage and fecal sludge treatment plants, which help to ease the country’s water stress, and biodigester alternatives to septic tanks, which reduce water contamination. Currently in development is an urban water management system powered by artificial intelligence that she hopes will supercharge water demand forecasting and allocation, leak detection and the ability to continuously monitor water quality.

Namita explains: “Health is directly related to the kind of water we drink and the cleanliness of our local environment. If these factors aren’t addressed, public health will not improve no matter how much we invest in the sector.”

Paving the way for other female entrepreneurs

As well as the joyful photographs of sanitation facilities, Namita has another source of motivation — the hope of being a changemaker for other women. She explains: “I’m from a state called Rajasthan that is known for producing sharp businessmen. Traditionally, women were not allowed to work, and some people still have that attitude. I didn’t want to stay at home; I knew my path was different.”

She now actively supports and encourages aspiring women entrepreneurs, especially in the sanitation sector, regularly sharing her expertise and providing mentorship.

Namita’s story is a beautiful example of the power of impact entrepreneurship. It illustrates how one clever solution can help spark change on such a grand scale that it changes a country forever.

At nearly 13 years old, Banka Bio has achieved great success and is ambitious about scaling its impact in the future. Whenever Namita has doubts, she simply reminds herself: “There’s no future without clean water.”