RTI International launches wholly owned subsidiary in India

NEW DELHI, India— To help India address its enduring and emerging development challenges, RTI International established a permanent presence in the country, a wholly owned subsidiary, Research Triangle Institute Global India Private Limited.

The subsidiary, based in New Delhi, will help RTI better serve its clients by supporting programs focused on sanitation, women's health and gender equity, noncommunicable diseases, sustainable energy and climate change.

"India is a prominent focal point for many of our efforts," said Wayne Holden, Ph.D., president and CEO of RTI. "Our new subsidiary will provide better collaboration opportunities for our people and projects in the field as well as allow us to have a greater impact on the human condition in India." 

Since 1982, RTI has supported improvements in health, water and sanitation, energy, and the environment in India. 

Currently, RTI is leading several research projects on advancing the early detection and prevention of cancer in India and will host a symposium in New Delhi Feb. 19-20 that will bring together leading experts from various stakeholder groups to address the burden of cancers, and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) more broadly. 

As part of a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, RTI is also in India testing a prototype of a toilet it developed to disinfect liquid waste, dry and burn solid waste, and convert the resulting combustion energy into stored electricity—all at a cost of less than 5 cents per user per day. As part of the effort, RTI has conducted user studies of the toilet in Ahmedabad and Vadadora, India, which offered valuable feedback on the technology approach to waste treatment and on water reuse in the system, as well as men's and women's preferences about the user interface. Going forward, RTI will partner with Indian engineering firm L&T Industries and local non-profits to manufacture and evaluate the prototype systems and begin performance testing.

RTI is also implementing, with Gates Foundation funding, the Research and Evaluation for Action in Child Health (REACH) project in the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. For this project, RTI is establishing and implementing a measurement, learning and evaluation framework to help monitor the progress of efforts to decrease child mortality due to pneumonia and diarrheal disease. 

Additionally, RTI is leading a project funded by The Climate Group, a United Kingdom based non-profit organization, which aims to enhance the lives of rural inhabitants in India by deploying renewable energy technologies and improving infrastructure quality. RTI in collaboration with NEERMAN, a Mumbai based non-profit firm, is conducting a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation of The Climate Group's energy initiatives across Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal to assess the success, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of different models. The models being piloted range from handheld lighting systems to scalable solar micro-grids, with a potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while enhancing the lives of rural inhabitants.

"Going forward, RTI plans to build on these foundational projects to expand our partnerships to generate and translate evidence to improve development outcomes in India," said Suneeta Krishnan, Ph.D., India country director for RTI.