Nithin Kamath, the founder and CEO of online broking platform Zerodha, recently backed Zerodor, a waterless urinal which featured in an episode of Shark Tank India season 3.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Kamath backed the pitch made by company founder Uttam Banerjee. He said that they have been using Zerodor for the men’s urinals at their offices for around 6 months.
“We have been using Zerodor for the men’s urinals at our offices for the last six months or so. Our water bills are down 50% — we did not expect it to be this much,” Kamath said.
Kamath further mentioned that his company Rainmatter is supporting the venture. “We liked the product because they are doing whatever is necessary to preserve water, which has become supercritical. We are supporting them through Rainmatter.”
As per the blog post shared by Kamath on Z, Zerodor is used by more than 700 organisations including Indian Railways, government institutions, some big food and beverage chains, shopping malls, theatres, defense establishments, automotive industries, and private corporations.
Founded by Sachin Joshi and Uttam Banerjee, Zerodor featured on Shark Tank India’s season 3. As per their pitch on the show, the product is a piece of retrofit equipment that can be deployed in any commercially available urinal.
The pitch also comprised a specially designed urinal for women. The founders said that they try to provide CPR to the sanitation system, i.e., Conserve, Protect, and Restore with their products and solutions.
According to Kumar, the product was born after his marriage. He hailed from a small village in Jharkhand where there was no washroom, which also became a reason for his wife to not visit his place.
The founders sought an investment of ₹1 crore in 3 per cent stake in their company. Zerodor did not get any deal on the show since the ‘sharks’ found several problems in the product.
Edelweiss Mutual Fund MD and CEO Radhika Gupta was not pleased with the slow rate of profit growth while Vineeta Singh questioned them on taking ₹2 crore from an investor and not being able to yield returns in 7 years.
Lenskart’s Peyush Bansal gave them an offer but on one condition that Zerodor will focus only one waterless urinal and hire a person to leads sales. The founders refused to take this offer, resulting in a no deal.
