Flowing with ambition
Razeen Zahin is from Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, and is in his second year of studying Mathematics & Statistics. Here he talks about his ambition to eradicate the water scarcity that affects 21 million people in his country.
The current reality in Bangladesh, particularly in Dhaka, is that 6 million people do not have access to clean drinking water or water for sanitation. My goal is to provide clean, accessible water for these people.
Water covers 71% of the Earth, but only 0.08% of it is available for human consumption. Recent research has shown that the cost of water production and purification has risen by 400% in comparison to other commodities in the last three decades, and global demand by almost 48%, due to pressure from the industrial and agricultural sectors. There are two ways we can tackle the situation and allow us to purify and produce water on a large scale globally – collect data efficiently and make real-time decisions.
I led Footsteps, a social enterprise in Bangladesh, from the age of 16. One of its initiatives, Project Trishna – which means “thirst” in Bengali – is now generating 3 to 6 million litres of water every year for almost 10,000 people in both urban and rural areas of Bangladesh.
Footsteps taught me a thing or two about leading through example and gave me the experience I needed to launch my own startup, Hydroquo+. The company, formed in alignment with two of the United Nations Sustainable Development goals, is making use of the Internet of Things, big data and artificial intelligence to ensure water security.
It does this by creating algorithms to help regulate water flow and forecast demand, with the aim of making water abundant and easily available. The unmatched rigour that my mathematics and statistics course equipped me with was instrumental in helping me look at global challenges through a different lens.
Being a social entrepreneur has allowed me to connect to a wide range of networks. Last year, I was one of the winners of the 2018 Resolution Social Venture Challenge at the One Young World summit, a gathering of the world’s most prominent young leaders. In 2019, I attended the high-profile Global Entrepreneurship Summit in The Hague and I’ve also been shortlisted as a finalist in the Converge Challenge, which helps innovative thinkers in Scotland develop business ideas.
Coming to Glasgow was a dream for me. The University is full of opportunities, and to be selected as one of the future world changers just reinforces my ambition and motivates me.
This article was first published in September 2019.
Razeen is one of our future world changers, students who have a goal or an idea to improve lives and make the world a better place. Read about all of our future world changers here.