Dr Pal Manickam is a gastroenterologist with a large following in India and the US, and his podcast Gut Feeling usually stays on food, sleep and the gut. This episode turns to the one thing every patient consumes most of and thinks about least: the water. His guest is Kaleeswaran Arunachalam, CFO and Head of Strategy at Crompton, who led the team behind the Rhion Biofier.
Why India learned to purify
The conversation starts with history. Twenty years ago Indian water carried heavy metals and microorganisms, and it arrived from wells, taps and tankers with no common standard. Reverse osmosis solved that problem, and Kaleeswaran gives it full credit: “They got a product that solved that problem at that point of time.”
Dr Pal adds the clinical view. He sees gastroenteritis constantly in patients returning from India, almost never in the US, where tap and bottled water are processed to the same standard. The difference is not the purifier in the home. It is the consistency of the source.
What an RO actually does
Kaleeswaran describes the RO membrane as an ultra-fine sieve. It removes what should not be there, and up to that point it is very good. “But that system doesn’t have an intelligence or a judgment to understand what is good and what is not good.” Calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium go out with the contaminants.
So it becomes a glass of clean water. But is that a glass of real water, and is that a glass of beneficial water? The question mark starts from there.
Kaleeswaran Arunachalam
Dr Pal raises the mineral cartridge that his own RO uses to add minerals back. Kaleeswaran’s answer is the analogy the whole episode turns on: a whole orange against an identical orange-flavoured juice. Remineralised water is standardised by the manufacturer; retained minerals are the ones native to where the water came from, in the ratios the body absorbs them. “It’s the difference between a processed packaged food and unprocessed, natural homemade food.”
TDS, and the myth of the low number
TDS is the total dissolved solids that give water its hardness. Above a certain level water is hard to drink daily, so purifiers soften it. The myth, both agree, is that lower is always better. A TDS below 50 usually means the calcium and magnesium have gone too.
The Biofier keeps the water in a range of roughly 150 to 200 TDS, with calcium around 30 to 40 mg/L and magnesium around 20 to 25 mg/L retained in their original proportions, not added. The connected app shows the TDS of your water every day, so you do not have to test it.
How CDI works, in one paragraph
Water passes first through a stage that deactivates microbes, so there is no need to boil it afterwards. Activated carbon takes out chlorine and odour. Advanced filtration removes heavy metals. Then it reaches the CDI cell: a pair of electrodes with a low voltage across them, which Kaleeswaran likens to a magnet. Charged particles that are not wanted are drawn onto the plates and flushed away; what is wanted stays in the stream. The Biofier is the first domestic product built on it. Where CDI came from →
Four litres for one
The number that stops Dr Pal is water waste. An RO needs around four litres of input to make one litre of drinking water. The Biofier recovers up to 70 per cent. Kaleeswaran puts it in household terms: a hundred families using it for a year save about six lakh litres. In a country where people still walk for water, he calls that the real differentiator.
The seed test
Asked for evidence, Kaleeswaran describes the study most people find easiest to believe: green gram and fenugreek seeds grown for seven days under identical light and conditions, the only variable being the water. The seeds watered with Biofier water showed around 50 per cent more growth, and the trial was observed and certified by TÜV. See the study on the Biofier page →
Why it is called a Biofier
Purifiers are named after a process. Crompton wanted to name the product after its purpose. “Bio means life. What we are trying to do here is a product that is going to retain what is required, not replace or remove everything.” Water is life; the machine is named for what water is meant to do.
Questions worth asking
- Your apartment’s central plant. Many buildings run an RO plant, then residents install another RO at home on top of it. Kaleeswaran’s advice is to start with the association: ask how the building purifies, before adding a second layer that strips what is left.
- The blue can at the gym. Ask whether it is RO or UV water, check the seal, and know that a bubble-top can should not be used beyond six months, after which microplastics become a real risk.
- The label. Dr Pal admits he only ever looked at the price. The episode’s closing ask is simply to know your water: what it contains, what was added and what was natural.
What changes, and what does not
Switch to a Biofier and you get a glass of water that is clean and safe but also carries its retained minerals, close to spring water, and you stop pouring three litres away for every one you drink. What does not change is everything else. “Water is one part of this entire cycle,” Kaleeswaran says. Food, movement and sleep still do the rest.
Price and where to find it
The Terra Blu+ is ₹47,999 and the Terra Blu ₹44,999, and the pre-book price is ₹39,999 and ₹36,999 respectively, ₹8,000 off each, with everything included for the first five years, no annual maintenance contract and no filter charges. Against an RO’s entry price plus yearly costs, the total cost of ownership works out similar or lower. Pre-booking is open online for a fully refundable ₹999, with stores in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai and Bengaluru first and a pan-India rollout to follow. Pre-book the Biofier →
