Picture this: You’ve built a network of 700+ IoT-enabled water ATMs serving 2 million people daily. Your biggest customer is the government. Then one day, that government collapses, the prime minister flees the country, and authorities shut down the entire internet—including the mobile networks your water ATMs need to function.
This isn’t a thought experiment. It’s exactly what happened to Minhaj Chowdhury and his team at Drinkwell in Bangladesh last year.
While most entrepreneurs worry about product-market fit, Minhaj had to figure out country-market fit—in real time, during a revolution.
The story of how Drinkwell not only survived but emerged stronger offers three lessons every social enterprise needs to hear. These aren’t the usual “be resilient” platitudes. They’re battle-tested strategies from someone who’s literally had to give away free water during government collapse while still making payroll for hundreds of employees.
Check out the video interview embedded below, or on youtube here. Keep reading below for our highlights of this conversation:
Lesson 1: Sell Aspirations, Not Fear
The water in rural Bangladesh contains arsenic levels 20x above safe limits. The WHO calls it “the largest mass poisoning in human history.” You’d think fear-based marketing would be a slam dunk. In fact, most nonprofits and governments were trying to help people drink clean water and avoid poisoning by sharing this information and communicating the danger of their water. For something as clear as avoiding poison, you’d think this would work.
You’d be wrong.
“We all know we have to floss,” Minhaj explains. “But how many people actually do it? Now, if I knew that flossing tonight would give me pearly whites immediately, I’d probably be more inclined.”
By working in and listening in communities, Minhaj found there were more effective ways to sell clean water.
The female entrepreneurs who inspired Drinkwell’s model didn’t pitch clean water to prevent cholera. They sold it by promising:
Whiter whites after laundry
Smoother hair before weddings
Less briny fish and whiter rice for family gatherings
The data backs this up: Approach-oriented messaging (focusing on gains) consistently outperforms avoidance-oriented messaging (focusing on losses) for behavior change, especially in lower-income segments. In a live-coaching series I led with world-renowned behavioral psychologist at MovingWorlds, Dan Ariely, we also talked about ways to help people move through “predictably irrational” tendencies.
Your takeaway: Stop selling the problem. Start selling the dream. Map out your customer’s aspirational moments—weddings, festivals, family gatherings— and help them realize it though short-term gains, and then position your solution as the path to shine in those moments.
Lesson 2: Make Your First Customer Famous (Not Yourself)
When Drinkwell got their first governmental utility customer through unexpected BBC coverage, most founders would have doubled down on PR for themselves. Minhaj did the opposite.
“You need to optimize for local government buy-in,” he says. “They don’t get a salary bonus for taking a risk with a startup. But what you can do is show that if this succeeds, they take the spotlight.”
His playbook:
Submit the government partner (not Drinkwell) for international water innovation awards
Arrange for them to speak at conferences abroad
Have chambers of commerce honor them during state visits
Position Drinkwell as “Intel inside”—a small logo in the corner
The results: From one inbound lead, Drinkwell expanded to every utility in Bangladesh and eight in India.
Your takeaway: Create a “customer glory” checklist for every government or institutional sale (the same also translated well to B2B and even B2C business models):
What award can they win because of your partnership?
What conference can they speak at?
What press release makes them the hero?
What metric makes their boss promote them?
Lesson 3: Persistence in Building Human Connections will Payoff
At every stage of Minhaj’s journey, there is a similar theme: Find a bunch of people, get in front of them, build a relationship, find ways for mutual value. Then do it again.
“One of my favorite sayings is people invest in lines and not dots. So when you first meet someone, that is a dot in time at which they interacted with you. Next meeting is another dot. Over time, those dots became a linear line of trust, and people will ‘I can see that you’re committed, and you are staying true to your word.’ ”
His playbook:
Build a tracking system to find all your ideal contacts
Follow them on the internet, go to where they are going, get introduced via connections – and try multiple methods when the contacts are especially important
Treat them as people, inspire them with your vision, and understand their needs – along the way, have human conversations to connect as more than business partners
Stay in touch – build enough dots to create a line of trust
Recognize them, reward them, and help them reach their goals – earn your way to their contributions
Lesson 4: Proactively Build a Better Board – they will get you through crises
During the Bangladesh crisis, Minhaj created a WhatsApp group with board members within hours of the government falling. When a utility threatened to cancel contracts with one week’s notice, a board member wired emergency funding within 12 hours.
But this only works because of how he built board culture from day one:
“I stayed at my board member’s house in San Francisco,” Minhaj shares. “One investor had a rule: you have to stay with my family for a night before we invest. During COVID, when my dad passed away, a board member would meditate with me over Zoom and step in to run management reviews while I grieved.”
The framework:
First board member = 9 months of diligence and demonstrated commitment
Institutional investors see this culture and can’t help but participate
Weekly board member-led training for local staff during COVID
Board meetings focus on vulnerability, not just metrics
Research from Stanford shows that boards with high interpersonal trust make decisions 3x faster during crises.
Your takeaway: Stop optimizing for board expertise. Start optimizing for board culture. Your first board member sets the tone for every crisis you’ll face. Take 9 months to get it right.
The Meta-Lesson: Survive Long Enough to Get Lucky, Work Hard Enough to Earn It
From 2012 to 2017, Drinkwell tried everything:
Household filters (97% failure rate after 2 years)
Female entrepreneur kiosks (unbankable at scale)
Multiple pivots and near-death experiences
Then BBC randomly featured them. A utility MD saw it. Everything changed.
“You have to survive long enough to find that route,” Minhaj reflects. “For us, that route wasn’t until five years after we started.”
But here’s what “getting lucky” actually looked like:
Applying to 50+ pitch competitions (winning maybe 10%)
Meeting his first investor on a dance floor at 11pm (after meeting the investor’s wife first)
Cold-emailing professors with Nobel-adjacent prizes
Flying to conferences where target ministers would be—not to get meetings, but to get 20 seconds for a card handoff
Waking up early ever Saturday morning for 9 months to meet a potential investor and Board member
The compound effect: Today, Drinkwell operates 700+ water ATMs, employs 700+ people (all local except Minhaj), and has weathered currency devaluations, COVID-19, and literal government collapse.
How to Help a Few Billion People
Learn the psychology behind what it takes to make customer’s lives better
Foster human relationships with the people that can help you scale - like investors, Board members, and key customers
Build the foundation to survive any crisis - personal, political, social, or economic
Hire local, and invest in their development
The most profound insight from Minhaj might be his crisis management mantra: “Will this matter in five years?” During his first five years, everything felt like a fire. Today, running a company through government collapse, he can only remember two things that actually kept him up at night.
Maybe the path to helping billions isn’t about avoiding crisis. It’s about building the relationships, culture, and patience to dance with it.
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