The Internet of Water: How Droople Is Making Every Drop Smart
As buildings, cities, and industries grapple with rising costs, aging infrastructure, and the invisible waste flowing through every pipe, a new generation of startups is redefining what it means to manage water.
In this episode of Liquid Assets, host Ravi Kurani sits down with Ramzi Bouzerda, founder and CEO of Droople, to unpack how the “Internet of Water” is connecting the world’s most overlooked network, plumbing, to the cloud. Together, they explore how real-time water data can predict maintenance, reveal behavior, and shift the business model of entire industries from selling hardware to delivering insight.
What You’ll Hear in This Episode:
- The Internet of Water: How IoT, AI, and big data are transforming every faucet, toilet, and filter into a connected node.
- Water Signatures: Why flow, pressure, and temperature reveal not just asset performance — but human behavior.
- Smart Maintenance: Predicting when to replace filters or service equipment based on actual data, not fixed schedules.
- Droople Inside: Embedding connectivity into new products to turn one-time sales into recurring revenue streams.
- From Banking to Water Tech: Ramzi’s leap from Swiss finance to building a purpose-driven startup inspired by his Algerian roots.
- Why Water Moves Slow: The challenge — and wisdom — of innovating in a system where failure isn’t an option.
- Long-Term Vision: How utilities, facilities, and manufacturers can build “digital twins” of their water systems to reduce waste and cost.
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Meet Ramzi Bouzerda
Ramzi Bouzerda is the founder and CEO of Droople, a Swiss startup building the Internet of Water—a platform connecting everyday plumbing assets to the cloud. Born in Algeria and raised amid water scarcity, Ramzi saw early how access shapes behavior and resilience. After a decade in banking and IT, he returned to his roots, applying data and IoT to water systems that have gone unmeasured for decades.
Today, Ramzi and his team partner with utilities, manufacturers, and facility operators to digitize water infrastructure: tracking flow, temperature, and pressure in real time to predict maintenance, reduce waste, and reveal the hidden patterns of human use.
Transcript
00:00
Ravi Kurani
Welcome to Liquid Assets. I'm your host, Ravi Kurani, and Liquid Assets is a podcast where we talk about the business of water, how management, technology and policy all look at the world of water. Today we have an awesome guest for you. We have Ramzi Bouzerda, who is joining us from Switzerland. Ramzi, how you doing today?
00:18
Ramzi Bouzerda
I'm doing great, thank you.
00:20
Ravi Kurani
Ravi, before were chatting, you had mentioned this term, the Internet of water. I feel like in the world we know what the Internet of Things are, or maybe some of us don't. And so I just want to, I want to put this out on the table. Let's go ahead and jump right into the Internet of Water. What does that mean?
00:38
Ramzi Bouzerda
Yeah, that's closely to the Internet of Things. Actually today, if you look at maybe the largest asset network that is off the radar are water assets. So basically, if you take in a building, you have sanitary fixtures, water treatment systems, filters, appliances, boilers, all those things today that surround us, and potentially we can count them like 100 billion even more on earth that are using, treating or distributing water to people every day, every second on Earth. But we don't know anything about them. And the Internet of Water is the Internet of those water assets. And imagine now we can collect data on those assets, what kind of value we could bring to the people, to the businesses, and to the water itself if we can leverage those data.
01:36
Ravi Kurani
Super compelling. The first question that comes to my mind is each of these assets use, treat, manage water differently, right? A water boiler is very different than a toilet. Maybe a commercial toilet in a commercial building is used different. And then a residential toilet. What does it mean to capture all these different pieces of information and also understand it?
01:56
Ramzi Bouzerda
That's, that's a great question. Actually, we at Drupal, we try to do that. We aim to do that by building this platform to collect data with IoT and big data and AI and all those stuff. But what does it mean? It means that basically at the end, a flush actually use water fills the tank. So by measuring flow, you are able to understand the water signature of a toilet. And the water signature of a toilet, as you said, in a home, is different from a water signature in a commercial building in an airport. Basically what we are saying is that few parameters, flow, temperature, maybe pressure, conductivity, are all those parameters that help you assess what is happening at that specific water asset. And that specific water asset has a specific water signature that makes it unique.
02:56
Ramzi Bouzerda
Now with those data, you can basically say how much a flush use water, it Helps you determine precisely its footprint. But also if you turn those data into affluence now, you can say how many times people have pushed the button. And then you can turn those data into affluence and then into cleaning need. So when do you need to go and clean that toilet? Because after so many times you have pushed the button, it means that it should be dirty. Right? So the water data, and what I like to really say is that is maybe the most intimate data that we generate in a building, in a home, whatever, where, but is the most intimate data that are related to human behavior, human activities. So comprehending those data, you comprehend the human nature, behavior, hygiene habits, you name it.
03:54
Ravi Kurani
Wow, that's so interesting. So just using flow, temperature, pressure and conductivity, just saying this back to you can basically build a signature per asset. Using that information, you can now know this unique signature of not only what's happening with the asset and when it needs to get cleaned, but more importantly, what are the people doing that are using it.
04:15
Ramzi Bouzerda
Exactly. And now if you think about it, you combine this toilet with the faucet tap that is close to it. And we know that after using a toilet, we need to wash our hands. By correlating what is happening at the different water assets, you can represent what is happening with the human behavior. Meaning, do you wash your hands after using toilet? Have you a good hand hygiene habits? So do you wash your hands more than 20 seconds? Are you stopping the water during the hand wash or do you let the water run during the hand wash? All those information helps you actually understand what we do with water, what we don't know about what we do with water.
05:04
Ramzi Bouzerda
And finally, how we can give that feedback in order to change the behavior of that user and how we can influence its awareness in order to make better and do better with water.
05:19
Ravi Kurani
So I get this kind of example that we're working with on, on the toilet, residential side. But if we jump to where Drupal actually is, you know, you guys are in water treatment, beverage dispensing, real estate, public services. Can you kind of give me a tactical example? And maybe this toilet example is. But like, what is the incentive for a business to understand, you know, whether Ravi washes his hands for 5 seconds or 10 seconds after he uses the toilet.
05:44
Ramzi Bouzerda
The context of hand hygiene, you can place it typically in a context of schools where the community is closed and the students are always the same. So you can really understand how hand hygiene habits is evolving in that community. Because few Years ago, were talking about COVID and hand hygiene was the best and the first to reduce the spread of the virus. And this is the beauty of water, because you can translate those data like a projection. You can understand sanitary risk or hygiene risk, you can understand energy footprint, you can understand water footprint, but you can also understand maintenance. So now back to your question.
06:32
Ramzi Bouzerda
If you apply this to a filter at a certain point of time, if you understand how much water is going through that filter, you can easily predict when you need to change that filter according to the volume of water that will be used or go through that. Now if you take the pressure, take a sediment filter or ultra fine filtration filter, by measuring pressure in and out, you can define the pressure drop. And by assessing the pressure drop, you can say this sediment filter is clogged and then I need to backwash it or, or change it. So yes, parameters helps you understand the health and predict the maintenance of any assets, any water assets, because actually it's closely related to its performance.
07:19
Ravi Kurani
So walk me through what the product looks like. Is it, is it this piece of hardware that you cut a pipe open and put it inside, or does it use WI fi? Does it use Bluetooth? Like walk me through the kind of customer journey of how the product looks.
07:31
Ramzi Bouzerda
Yeah, the customer journey is quite simple. So we try to make it simple because as you said, water assets, you have a wide range of water assets. And if you go to the us a toilet is different from my toilet here at home in Switzerland. So we try to make an IoT device that is very flexible, meaning that we split the two, the sensor and the IoT piece. That is where the intelligence is running. And this sensor is from the market. We can use our sensor, but we can also use sensors from the customer. But basically, let's say we provide Sensor and the IoT piece, the Drupal eyelink, what we call it, and the plumber fix the sensor in line.
08:25
Ramzi Bouzerda
It could be just under the faucet, tap on the outlet, hot and cold, and then you plug the sensors to one unit and you have hot stream, cold stream in the same graph and you have then water usage, energy usage and the number of time the faucet has been opened and so on. So you can combine basically this iutps the eyelink, which is the smart thing, I would say. And you can choose now, oh, let's say I need flow to measure water usage. I will use one or two. So you have mono and duo. You install them all our clients, it's a do it yourself. So they install themselves the unit and then the communication part is related to Lora.
09:19
Ramzi Bouzerda
So we use Lora because it's a long range, low power protocol, very useful for IoT application where data are small and where you need to last a very long period of time. So we run with a battery that can last between five and 10 years in good condition of transmission.
09:41
Ravi Kurani
Wow, great. Because that was the other question that I had of we all try to set up our Chromecast or the Amazon Alexa and getting things set up to WI Fi. So I think Lorawan is an amazing technology on getting devices easily connected up to your backend so that people can actually do what they do best, which is look at the data.
10:02
Ramzi Bouzerda
Yes, exactly. So today I would say the issue with Lora is that you need to deploy your own network because if you rely on coverage, Lora coverage, unfortunately it's not yet there. And especially when it comes to indoor applications, if you have Lora coverage outdoor, it's fine. Many carriers provide that. But when you are indoor and especially if you are in the basement, typically if you are measuring boiler, Lora coverage is an issue. So you need to bring a gateway that will translate Lora to a backhole of Wi Fi or 4G and then you are up and running. So today, count 15 minutes and 30 minutes to install a unit, configure it on the platform, and then you have the data ready.
10:56
Ravi Kurani
Beautiful. I heard another podcast on the Don't Waste Water podcast of your story in the early morning adventure in the kitchen on the birth of Drupal. Can you shine some light on that a little bit?
11:12
Ramzi Bouzerda
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a very basic story, I would say, because it's really about what we don't know about water. So we are using it every second. We don't know today. If I ask you how much water you use, maybe you are, I would say, an early adopter of tech and then you have some sensors somehow aware of what you use. But I can ask everyone. No one is able to tell me how much water they use. Today I'm using my smartphone. I can tell you how much battery left on my smartphone every hour. I'm able to tell that. So see how this parallel between water and smartphone is crazy. And I can't live more than three or four days without water. I can live without my smartphone. Well, maybe that's crazy. So come back to my story. I was using.
12:08
Ramzi Bouzerda
So I have a baby bottle. My son was, was actually asking for milk. So I put, I need to put water and then the powder. So 300 milliliter. You feel it, you feel too much. So what do you do? You, you pour a bit, but at 3am you are so tired that you pour too much and so you need to feel again and so on and so on. And at the end, to be honest, I asked myself that my faucet could give me that information so I could be more precise and then reduce the waste. But I was convinced that something exists. So few days after I was browsing on Google, something that I can plug on my faucet app and I was surprised that nothing was in the market.
12:57
Ramzi Bouzerda
And, and then I, I asked myself, that's really strange because I have a bill that I receive every year on my water. I can't do nothing with that information because it's too late and it's, it's so vague. So I don't know 100 cubic meter of water used last year. What do you do with that? No, nothing. Right. And then I started to say there is a way actually if I can measure where I use the water to understand better. Because you kind of decentralize the data, decentralize the capture and by decentralizing you create kind of a mesh and then you have a more rich context on where the water and what we do with water. And this is where it started.
13:47
Ravi Kurani
Wow. Your, your background is also in banking and I t. I get the kitchen story.
13:57
Ramzi Bouzerda
Liquid assets. Liquid assets.
14:00
Ravi Kurani
Exactly. How has it been from going from banking it to scrum like to building a water technology?
14:09
Ramzi Bouzerda
Yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a strange jump. It actually somehow it makes sense because. So I'm computer science engineer as a background. I started in banks actually developing software. I developed a lot of software in banks and then I started to help banks to digitize the more precisely be more agile with their software development skills and capabilities in order to deliver more and have a better actually insurance or assurance in terms of quality when they deliver software to their customers. This experience was really, I would say was very helpful for me to. When I started Drupal. So Drupal was somehow an accident, but somehow was not an accident because for me I was looking for something that I would say makes sense, was meaningful. And after 15 years in the banking industry, to be honest, I lost that, that meaning.
15:08
Ramzi Bouzerda
And, and it comes back to my, I would say roots and my origins because I'm not from. So I'm Swiss, but I was not born in Switzerland, I was born in Algeria in a country where water is scarce actually and it's still scarce. Forty years ago it was scarce and today it is still scarce. So water scarcity, when it's really pregnant and really here to last, then you have really a problem because it's very difficult to get out of that. It's like all the pieces of the puzzle were together. The mission and the call of saving water came back to my youth and the fact that my mother and grandmother were used to fill water tanks to secure water for two, three days. So I lived that period.
16:01
Ramzi Bouzerda
And then this experience in banking helped me understand what is the complexity of building architectures, software platforms and so on. And finally also helping me how you can convince some investors to put some money in my venture thanks to somehow a background that can a bit reassure them because I, I have managed money or I was close to people that or skilled in managing money.
16:33
Ravi Kurani
That's such an inspiring story to hear from your upbringing in Algeria, your mom and grandmother filling up the water tanks and then your. Your background in banking to then get you to fund and build Drupal. I want to go back to the pitch story. What do you. Did you tell investors, right? They obviously want a billion dollar company that's going to turn their fund in 10 years. What's your story? How is Drupal $1 billion company?
17:00
Ramzi Bouzerda
Very good question. So the P is quite simple. I would say today imagine that once the water enters the building, we don't really know where it goes and what we do with it. So there is a huge opportunity to collect data in order to understand that in order to save water. That's great because we increase awareness so people will change their behavior and reduce overall the waste. But this opportunity is also a business opportunity because all those water assets that we discussed before and manage, or I would say manage on a time based condition for maintenance. So now if you bring conditional based maintenance, you save opex, you save intervention, you save unplanned interventions and you provide value to operators that manage those water assets.
17:52
Ramzi Bouzerda
You provide value to facility managers, you provide value to property owners because you protect the building with leakage detection, you extend the lifetime of the assets. The piping hardness has a direct impact on the energy footprint of a building typically. So you can overall enhance the value chain related to water usage. And then if you look at that market, it's not only about 100 billion water assets, it's about buildings, it's about real estate, which is the largest a CO2 contributor, more than 40% worldwide. I would say it's a great opportunity. But we know that water industry, or water is a tough industry. So it's slow, it's conservative, but once it's there, it's very worthy. So that's the pitch. So maybe we are building today the Google of water in for the next five or 10 years because no one has those data today.
19:01
Ramzi Bouzerda
So that's something very unique, I would say.
19:04
Ravi Kurani
I love this idea of discovering data. You know, you said that from this Google example of we are creating it, right? Your, your water bill tells you used 100, you know, acre, feet or meters, you know, whatever the value is, but you just don't know what to do with it. And if you can make value and insights from collecting this information, build and then look at it from a 50,000 foot view, you know, from kind of an airplane, you get a much clearer picture of what's happening with our water assets. And I love what you said here of switching the entire argument to maintenance around building assets because hardness in your water is correlated to the energy efficiency and how long your buildings last. And water is the lifeblood of a building. Right.
19:50
Ravi Kurani
You need to flush your toilets, you need to wash your hands, you need to drink water.
19:52
Ramzi Bouzerda
Exactly. You can't, you can't cheat that entirely.
19:55
Ravi Kurani
Wow, that's. I love the pitch. So what does the roadmap look like? I know you guys are in these industries, you have I think close to 2 or 3,000 units out there in the field. What does tactically executing something like this look like?
20:09
Ramzi Bouzerda
But first of all, it. Now about the first objective was to demonstrate that the product works. We are able today to equip any kind of water treatment systems, any kind of appliance and any kind of sanitary fixture. It's easy to install, you can give it to a plumber and he's able to do Iot. It looks like very simple, but that was a huge actually achievement per se. Now the idea is how we can scale this with the help of big players that do not want to just retrofit things, but embed Drupal in their water assets from inception. So like Drupal inside for computers, you have Drupal inside for water asset, that's next target. Now. So how we can partner with big players in the water treatment system, it could be, I don't know, Panther, Corita or really big ones in sanitary fixtures.
21:13
Ramzi Bouzerda
It could be Kohler, it could be any brand. Gabriel Here in Switzerland or anyone that could be interested to say, okay, those guys have been able to turn a hardware product into a recurring revenue because this is what we have done. So we typically equipped restrooms today in molds and we are able to collect the data in order to enhance the cleaning schedules for facility managers. So reducing the opex of cleaning, enhancing the service at the end, also reducing the water waste. For those guys that are selling today, taps, showers and bathrooms, it's just hardware. So it's sold and that's it. This isn't, we are coming with a new model. So you are not selling hardware, you are selling service thanks to your hardware.
22:05
Ramzi Bouzerda
And that's a big change for those guys because then imagine 100 million of toilets that you can turn into recurring revenue.
22:15
Ravi Kurani
That's such a compelling shift in the way that there is a one time payment that's paid for a toilet now turned into annuity basically.
22:25
Ramzi Bouzerda
And for them the value is they know now how their assets are performing in the field as well. So in terms of product design and so on, it will change everything for them. And on the other side, they have also a better engagement with their end users because they have data on how they use their product, how they use water. It's, I mean for me, if I was sitting on, I don't know, 100 million of toilets that I can, I sell every year, I will, I would buy that.
22:57
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, yeah, entirely. We have a lot of founders in the water industry that also. Listen to the podcast. I want to dig a little bit into EPFL and the La Forge incubator. I just want to focus on that particular arena. You said that in the beginning you had to prove that the technology worked, obviously, right. You need a proof of concept. Water secondarily, I think all of us know is a very difficult industry to get into. It is slower moving. And I had a conversation on a podcast just a few episodes ago of it's in due. Right. That water is a slow moving industry because it's kind of the lifeblood of society. And if you move as fast and you know, break things, you can end up with kind of more problems than you want on your hand.
23:37
Ravi Kurani
So I want to just, I want to zoom into this EPFL incubator. What was it like then? What was kind of those first few moments of starting Drupal. Right. What does that look like?
23:47
Ramzi Bouzerda
Well, it's, it was great moments. I, I mean EPFL is my university that where I Made my master in computer science and then I came back there 20 years afterward to start Drupal again. And first of all it's about meeting people that will help you actually move forward. So one of that great meeting was my co founder Peter Rax that I met at PFL at an investor conference and we shared some like two years together. He was really excited by the idea and, and he was involved in the energy side. So water energy. He quickly see the mix and the synergy both. So that was a fundamental meeting and, and we also spent I don't know, maybe 100, 200 documents PowerPoints to understand the market, the segments and where should we start and so on.
25:06
Ramzi Bouzerda
And we have infinite debates on what, where we should start and how we should start and who we should target. So we made a lot of mistakes at the end like everyone. So we started first to try to convince utilities in Switzerland. But we have seen that utilities is just a nightmare to convince so slow. And we understood also that 80% of their costs stop at the main meter in building. So meaning today everyone that maybe waste water, they are happy because more they waste, more they pay. So the utility by design today, with the business model that is around water is not incentivized to reduce water usage because it's the source of revenue. Right? We understood that.
25:57
Ramzi Bouzerda
So we shifted to just the next player in the value chain to say oh, if it's something to save, then it's for the people that pay for water. And we have seen that it was not really, to be honest at that time we pitched to investors and they asked me are you serious? Do you want to save water? We are in Switzerland, we have plenty of water. So some people were really laughing at me and I understood that were too early at that time, way too early even today. Sometimes people give me this argument that but water is cheap, why saving water? We always have this argument. And I like to say that you are actually looking at the price of water today.
26:48
Ramzi Bouzerda
But keep in mind that all the challenges we have today, tomorrow or after tomorrow, you will pay, you won't pay the same price. And people start to understand that it's really a long run. All that we understood and we learned from the market and from all those trials and errors from APFL up today.
27:14
Ravi Kurani
I feel like every founder has a story that they've uniquely lived. After you founded Drupal, is there an event or something you can talk about that's just a Great story that, you know, every time you step up on a mentor stage at the next accelerator, you're kind of. You tell the founders this particular story. Anything come to mind?
27:32
Ramzi Bouzerda
Yeah, I would say I. I would say one come to my mind because. So starting a venture is not really about. The idea is really about yourself going through all the stages that will actually push you in your uncomfortable zone. All those steps are grades that you need to earn to succeed, but not to succeed to be rich or to succeed with your venture. Potentially, you will succeed with your venture, but first of all, it's a success of yourself because you have been able to go through all those. Those. Those levels and experiences. So for me, the only thing I would say is to say that actually see how I need to better, push me to better, and as long as I'm able to better, I feel that I'm succeeding.
28:27
Ramzi Bouzerda
So that's maybe a bit philosophical, but I'm close to the success of Drupal as long as I'm close to be more, to better myself.
28:39
Ravi Kurani
Which makes so much sense because when you said of the beginning of why you ended up starting Drupal, it was this shift that you needed yourself in moving from the banking and IT industry that had gotten a little stale or tiring for you, and then moving into something that was a little bit more rewarding, I guess you can say really interesting. Awesome. Ramzi. I ask everybody this question towards the end of the podcast. It's. Is there a book, a TV show, or a movie that has had a profound impact on the way that you view the world or you view the world of water?
29:11
Ramzi Bouzerda
To view the world, for sure. I have many books I could give you that. Really? Yeah. Change the way I look at the word. And I can say that from a venture perspective. There is one book which is really great, Crossing the Chasm, that helped me really understand that you are not going to. If people are interested to use your product at the beginning, those people won't be your customers at the end, because your customers are people that are more pragmatic and conservative and at the. At the beginning, they don't want to test your product because they see it as a risk. It helped me really understand that when people are very enthusiastic or people are not enthusiastic at all with your product, it has a meaning. It. It's a source of information.
30:07
Ramzi Bouzerda
And you need to understand that in order to succeed in your. In your business. I, I would say this is definitely something that you need to read as an entrepreneur because it helps breaks a lot of pressure, I would say.
30:21
Ravi Kurani
Awesome. Yeah, we'll definitely put that up on the show. Notes crossing the chasm. Ramzi, thank you so much for joining us today.
30:27
Ramzi Bouzerda
Thank you, Ravi, and hope to see you soon again.
30:30
Ravi Kurani
Definitely. And for all those of you out there listening, you can find Liquid Assets wherever you find your podcast. Be that on Spotify, Apple, Google. And if you really want to subscribe, you can go to LiquidAssets CC. We'll catch you next episode. Thanks, everyone.