Drop by Drop

High in the Himalayas, a start-up is building automated ice reservoirs that can irrigate fields during the driest stretches of the year

- Bunty Thoidingjam

In the arid, cold desert region of Ladakh, artificial cone-shaped structures dot the landscape. Termed ice stupas for their mound-like shape, meltwater from the structures provides essential irrigation water during the sowing season in spring and early summer.

Ice stupas, some of which tower over 30m, have been gaining popularity across Ladakh since the early 2010s as communities scramble together to find ways to combat glacial recession and unpredictable snowfall.

The local solution triggered an idea and in 2023, Acres of Ice, a water-management company, was born—founded by Basit Afzal and Suryanarayanan Balasubramanian who met through work and joined forces to scale up the innovation and automate its deployment.

Still Waters

The Srinagar of Afzal’s childhood was a city blessed with a plenitude of water. Water was an integral part of life, he recalls, with houseboats bobbing on Dal Lake and the Jhelum meandering through the city.

Trained in soil and water conservation, he only came to understand scarcity of water in high-altitude regions when he went to Ladakh in 2011 to implement projects for a Srinagar-based irrigation company.

While working on irrigation projects, Afzal met Balasubramanian in 2016, a scientist bringing together communities for water management. Balasubramanian had also worked with education reformist Sonam Wangchuk, the brain behind the design of manual ice stupas.

In 2019, Afzal moved to the United Kingdom as a water management specialist. At the time, Balasubramanian was in Switzerland, working on a PhD in geosciences, but the two remained in touch.