Nithin Kamath, the founder and CEO of online brokerage platform Zerodha, recently endorsed Zerodor, a waterless urinal that featured in an episode of Shark Tank India Season 3.
In an article on X (formerly Twitter), Kamath supported the pitch made by company founder Uttam Banerjee. He said they have been using Zerodor for male urinals in their offices for about 6 months.
“We’ve been using Zerodor for men’s urinals in our offices for about six months. Our water bills are down 50% – we didn’t expect it to be that much,” Kamath said.
Kamath further mentioned that his company Rainmatter supports the venture. “We liked the product because they do everything necessary to preserve water, which has become supercritical. We support them through Rainmatter.”
According to the blog post shared by Kamath on Z, Zerodor is used by over 700 organizations including Indian Railways, government institutions, major food and beverage chains, malls, theaters, defense establishments , automobile industries and private companies.
Founded by Sachin Joshi and Uttam Banerjee, Zerodor hosted season 3 of Shark Tank India. According to their pitch in the show, the product is a retrofit piece of equipment that can be deployed in any commercially available urinal.
The grounds also included a urinal designed specifically for women. The founders said they were trying to provide CPR to the sanitation system, that is to say, Conserve, protect and restore with their products and solutions.
According to Kumar, the product came about after his marriage. He hailed from a small village in Jharkhand where there were no toilets, which also became a reason for his wife not to visit in his place.
The founders have requested an investment of ₹1 crore in a 3% stake in their company. Zerodor got no deal on the show, as the “Sharks” found several problems in the product.
Edelweiss Mutual Fund MD and CEO Radhika Gupta was unhappy with the slow rate of profit growth while Vineeta Singh questioned them on taking ₹2 crore from an investor and not being able to produce returns in 7 years .
Peyush Bansal of Lenskart gave them an offer, but on one condition, Zerodor will concentrate only one waterless urinal and hire one person to head the sales. The founders refused to take this offer, resulting in an affair.
