E625 | EUCVC Summit 2025: Gijs De Bruin, PureTerra Ventures & Sead Bajrovic, Water Impact Partners: The Missing water

0:00Water is the world's most critical and most undervalued resource. As scarcity rises and infrastructure strains, venture capital is finally waking up to the opportunity. Sead Barovic of Water Impact Partners and Heista Brown of Pure Terra Ventures reveal where innovation is flowing, what barriers remain, and why water tech must become a core pillar of Europe's climate and impact strategy. All right, so Jebe got tired of standing, so I'm going to do his job. Heis, welcome to Copenhagen. Thank you. First time I'm here? Absolutely. First time in beautiful Copenhagen. Never been here before. You will enjoy it.

0:45All right, let's talk about something that is actually powering the whole economy here. Water. Powering energy, food, as we just heard about, even AI. And you've been in the space for quite some time, Heis. But tell the audience here, why water? Why now? And why do we need dedicated investments in this space? Yeah. So it's great to be here. It's great to talk about water. But water is still one of the most undervalued scarce resources we have in the world. And that's a pity. I mean, basically, it's the oil which runs everything. We just talked about food. Water is important for food. Water is important for all kinds of production.

1:32If it's cars, if it's building data centers or cooling data centers. But we keep missing the point on the scarcity of water. And it's about time we do something about it. And I want to put it a bit in perspective. 79 % of all the water we have in the world is salt water. From the remaining 3%, 2.7 % of that is locked in glaciers or underground aquifers, so very difficult to reach. Only 0.3 % is easy to reach through lakes, rivers or atmospheric water. On top of that, we have compounding issues through climate change, migration, increased population, industries which require more and more water.

2:19So it's been calculated by the United Nations and the World Economic Forum that in 2030 demand will outstrip supply by 40%. So until now we have been leaning on legacy systems. So centralized water treatment with networks going everywhere. And they don't cope with all the issues we're going to face. We have too little water in some areas, we have too much water in other areas, and all the water we have is too dirty. Polluted with PFAS, which are forever chemicals, or with pharmaceuticals, which are increasingly everywhere in water. Sounds like a very positive message, isn't it? Anyway, there are solutions.

3:08And we can solve those issues by all paying more attention to water and start investing in new systems. Not through government regulations, but actually powered by a need from corporates to be more resilient and build resilience by themselves. But also taking heat of the water basin in which they are located. So building ecosystems together with all the other stakeholders in those basins. And if you miss that point, things can happen like what happened with Amazon the other day in Arizona. They wanted to build a new data center. And basically it was shut down because it didn't really take care of all the stakeholders.

3:52Now on that subject about the corporate. So we see water becoming a bigger risk for the ongoing business, for data centers, manufacturing and so forth. So what are the corporates doing? Do you have some cases where they are kind of taking the lead in their different industries? Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, water is becoming more unpredictable, you know, in terms of quality and supply. So, corporates need to start looking into the supply chains and in the water basis and build a water strategy. We see corporates taking action and lots of them already have water stewardships in place. But for me, many of them are also still greenwashing.

4:43And, okay, we have water stewardship programs, but we don't really do anything. We talk. And action is required. So luckily there's enough examples of corporates who take action. Take Apple, for example. They have a great water stewardship program and they actually work with the entire supply chain around the world, managing the water, monitoring the water, but also measuring how much they reduce the water. Another example is BASF, which actually has new technology deployed and can take residues and valuables from the waste stream and actually turn that again into products they can sell. L 'Oreal is another example.

5:33They actually have loop factories, as they call it. So they turn around the water within their systems and within their factories without actually taking new water in. So these are some of the examples. Fully recyclable. Okay, and on the investment side, so last year we finally passed the$1 billion investments in water tech. How do you see this moving forward from an investment point of view? especially do you see more corporates getting involved either as LPs or setting up their own funds? Yeah, so there's an incredible amount of investment required, trillions of dollars, to turn from legacy systems to more the new system, which can actually cope with all the new challenges we have in the water space.

6:30Seven years ago, when we started out with investing in water, we only could actually go to real impact investors. Anybody else said, okay, you can't make any money in water. I think for some cases it might have been true, especially investing in new technologies. It's a very conservative market. But I think that changes, and it has changed. Fast forward to where we are now, we see a lot more VCs setting up thematic funds in water. And we also see other VCs actually earmarking money to be invested in water and water technology. The United Nations actually calculated that for every dollar invested in water resilience, $7 return can be expected.

7:22So these are good things. AI software solutions being implemented in the water space actually lead to more efficiency. And also companies like yourself and us working together with corporates, making sure that the right technologies is applied to the right problem helps a lot for putting the money in the right direction.

7:52when you look at the innovation and you've you've been in this space for many years what what is kind of what is the best interesting innovation you see and what would you like to see more of what would be the most disruptive thing in water the most disruptive thing in water well the most disruptive thing for me at this moment would be that more corporates you know people put money where their mouth is and invest in water actually, that would be really disruptive. Wow, cool. That's a good conclusion on this. Heist, thanks a lot. We have a round table later, so please join us and we'll dive more into what powers the entire economy.

8:34All right. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks.