Aquagenuity CEO Doll Avant is pioneering an integrated database that would make checking local water quality as easy as checking the weather.
The data scientist started studying water quality across the United States after the Flint, Michigan water crisis while an undergraduate at Harvard University. She found more than 3,500 locations with worse water quality than Flint —especially in communities of color.
Avant launched Aquagenuity in 2018 so people could search and test their local water quality. Now, the startup has raised $1.7 million led by Uber and Slack investor SoftBank Group Corp. and has a partnership with Amazon.
In 2020, only 93 Black women in the U.S. raised $1 million or more in venture capital, according to ProjectDiane, a database that analyzes investments in Black and Latinx women. The median seed round for Black women is $125,000, compared to the national median of $2.5 million.
“It's really important for people to see a woman of color from the city building things in technology,” Avant said.
Avant built the database by aggregating publicly available information from the Environmental Protection Agency and local municipalities. She says there’s about 150,000 water systems and more than 3,000 counties in the U.S. That means each location could have different formatting for their water quality information.
Aquagenuity allows people to put in their zip code to see their area’s water quality scores along with contextualized information about how it could impact their health.
But Avant wanted to go deeper so people could understand the water coming directly from their tap. She created a water sampling test kit, which people can purchase then send back to get more specific info. She named it "the 23andMe of water quality.”
Each new test gives Aquagenuity more data, creating a more detailed and accurate network. Avant also started an educational partnership to give the startup more data and teach grade school students environmental literacy. The Guardians of H20 program began after a partnership with the Georgia Aquarium and then expanded into Atlanta Public Schools.
“Kids get really excited about being able to apply these abstract concepts of science and math to a real-world problem,” Avant said.
The curriculum, co-developed with the Georgia Department of Education, meets STEM standards and is based only in the Atlanta area. Avant says she’s gotten requests from about a dozen cities that want to adopt the program.
Aquagenuity also converts the data into a numerical “AquaScore” for a simple ranking of water quality.
“We’re building toward a future where you don’t have to physically test your water. Instead, it’s being monitored automatically in the background,” Avant said. “But, to get there, we have to have people test their water and get those hyperlocal data points.”
With the Amazon partnership, checking water quality will be as simple as asking, “Alexa, what’s my water score?” Avant hinted at an upcoming partnership that would also integrate that data into phones.
Aquagenuity’s revenue comes from licensing the water data to corporate partners and the consumer test kits. Avant says the partnerships allow corporations to fulfill their environmental, social and governance metrics and differentiate from competitors.
With the seed round, Avant plans to bring in another data scientist, expand the technical team and focus on the startup’s partnerships. Aquagenuity also has funding from Google for Startups.
As a “404 kid,” Avant said launching and keeping Aquagenuity in Atlanta was a priority. Aquagenuity has office space in the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurship.
