National Institute of Urban Affairs, Delhi (NIUA), a premier research institute under Ministry of Urban Development (Government of India, GoI), in association with Taru Leading Edge, IRC and Ennovent, and with the strategic collaboration of YES BANK and Valluri Technology Accelerators, has initiated a project ‘Innovation Hub for Urban WASH Solutions’ which is supported and funded by USAID. The project will support the development of scalable solutions for urban water, sanitation and hygiene in India within the national, regional, state and city framework. The hub will lead activities that support the national and state urban initiatives (AMRUT, SBM, SMART City Programs) and proactively engage with a wide range of partners, including the private sector, to discover and develop innovations and devise intervention strategies and business models for delivering effective, affordable and sustainable WASH solutions in the Indian context. The initiative will contribute significantly to achieving the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 6: for clean water and sanitation to all, besides other SDG commitments and other national commitments by the GoI.

The primary goal of the initiative will be to improve urban WASH sector performance through incubation and acceleration of innovative solutions, technologies, programs and service delivery models within a collaborative framework. A core element of the initiative is to build partnerships with and between public, government (national/state/local), civil society, private sector stakeholders, academia, donors, etc. dedicated to establishing shared visions and improving WASH outcomes, as well as facilitating knowledge sharing among cities, states and national platforms.

The Innovation Hub will create an enabling ecosystem where an ethos of innovative experiments and learning-by-doing is combined with evidence-based strategic planning and the lab-to-land approach. As part of this project, it is proposed to set-up a National Innovation Hub to support the project planning, implementation and monitoring activities; and help achieving the goals of the project. The project shall be piloted in 3 cities in 3 different states in India, over a period of 3 years.

There are five vacancies for this project. Please see the attachments for more information.