Luxury Loos that Woo
Free swanky public toilets are becoming a reality in Chennai. A free clean luxury loo is providing welcome relief to commuters and public including techies near Chennai’s Indira Nagar Railway Station. It has clean urinals for men, western closets for women, differently abled and transgenders. The facility is wheelchair accessible.
The free mini toilet complex is part of a cafe, so public can also recharge themselves with a cup of tea, coffee or snacks. Entry for these toilets would be from outside.
Launched by “LooCafe” which has experience in running clean toilets, soon 55 such cafes with luxury toilets would come up across Chennai if everything goes well. The Greater Chennai Corporation has offered these places free of cost for upto fifteen years on condition clean and stench free toilets are made available to public free.
An Internet of Things based system would centrally monitor stench levels and activate regular cleaning to ensure a pleasant experience for public toilet users. It promises a stench free public toilet experience for users. “LooCafe redefines the entire experience of using a public toilet. We are working on a lot more tech enabled toilets as we scale up. We are putting together our experience in different cities and states in a scientific way to take the entire experience to the next level” explains Mr Abhishek Nath, Founder and CEO of LooCafe to tellmystory.in.
Thooya Innovations, a start-up that calls itself a social enterprise is LooCafe’s local partner. “It would cost us around twelve to fifteen lakh rupees to build brand new toilets at each location. The rental revenue from these cafes would be used to maintain the toilets clean and stench free all the time”, says Mr Venkatesh C R, Co-founder and Managing Director of Thooya Innovations Private Limited.
Madras Coffee House, a popular brand has taken up the Indira Nagar project. “Other leading brands including Namma Cafe, Chai Kings, Coffee Shastra Superstar Pizza are really interested. We look forward to more brands coming on board” said Poornima Venkatesh, Co-founder and COO of Thooya Innovations Private Limited.
Though Chennai has tried a few other models in the past all have failed overtime in ensuring clean toilets. With business prospects of this cafe model linked to the cleanliness quotient of toilets, many say this holds promise. “The place ought to be clean and odour free for the cafe to become a success. If we fail the Corporation would cancel the deal” added Mr Venkatesh who says this model would also be expanded to other cities across Tamil Nadu.
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This Post Has 2 Comments
Excellent story. We shall live in hope that there is a chance of finding clean toilets around chennai city
Dear Sir, I am sure you will write in Tamil language also the usage practices of the Loo and in brief the advantages of the Cafe part of it. Maybe the cost will be a little less if the highest technology is used for the loo part of the common toilet than the cafe part of it. With Regards, V.Ganapathy, Retd.Special Correspondent, THE HINDU & Sanitation activist , Tiruchi, Tamil Nadu