Glacierclean Technologies

Glacierclean Technologies Inc. was a Canadian company focused on developing accessible water testing solutions to prevent outbreaks of waterborne diseases. The company was co-founded by Sushanta Mitra, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering at the University of Waterloo, and Naga Siva Kumar Gunda, a post-doctoral fellow at the same institution. Their research backgrounds directly fueled the company's mission to commercialize faster, more affordable water testing methods.

The core of Glacierclean's business was the development and sale of kits to detect Escherichia coli (E. coli), a key indicator of water contamination. The company targeted a broad market, from developing communities where access to expensive lab testing is limited, to municipal water systems in developed countries seeking to reduce costs. One of its key products was a paper strip test, likened to a litmus test, designed to detect E. coli at a fraction of the cost and time of traditional laboratory methods. The strip worked by using sugar to attract bacteria, which then became trapped in the paper and reacted with embedded chemicals, causing a color change to pinkish-red to indicate a positive result. High contamination levels could be detected in as little as 30 minutes, while lower levels took up to three hours.

Prior to the paper strip, the company developed the "Mobile Water Kit," which used a hydrogel-based system in a plunger-tube assembly that also changed color in the presence of E. coli. The results from this kit could be sent to a smartphone application for display and transmission. The business model involved selling these testing kits, with earlier mobile kits priced around $5 per test and the simpler paper strips aiming for a cost of about 50 cents per test. Glacierclean secured grant and seed funding, including a $5,000 grant in August 2015 and a $50,000 seed round in May 2017. However, according to PitchBook data, the company is now out of business as of January 2025.

Keywords: water testing, E. coli detection, public health, environmental monitoring, water safety, microbial testing, rapid diagnostics, point-of-use testing, hydrogel technology, paper-based sensor, Sushanta Mitra, Naga Siva Kumar Gunda, University of Waterloo spin-off, affordable diagnostics, developing world technology, DipTest, Mobile Water Kit, environmental services, waterborne disease prevention, portable water analysis