Three young entrepreneurs last night won over the BBC's Dragon's Den panel to secure unanimous financial backing for a Third World water carrier and purifier that could benefit 1.2 billion people worldwide.
Amanda Jones, James Brown and Nicky Pang say their product - the Reverse Osmosis Sanitation System (Ross) - could improve the health of the Third World by allowing people to collect water from the nearest sources and make it safe to drink.
After Ms Jones and Mr Brown presented the group's business plan on the programme last night, its five multi-millionaire investors - including Scot, Duncan Bannatyne - agreed to put up the £50,000 the young entrepreneurs had requested.
Each of the five panel members committed £10,000 for a 2% return.
Ms Jones, a graduate of Glasgow University, Mr Brown and Mr Pang, who are studying at Glasgow School of Art and Glasgow University, founded their company, Red Button Design, in November last year. They were inspired to design the system after discovering that 10,000 people a day die from diseases related to unsafe water.
People in sub-Saharan Africa have to walk up to 6km to find safe drinking water and they can collect about 10 to 15 litres each. With the Ross, the user will be able to walk to the nearest untreated water source, on average about 1.2km away, collect 50 litres of water and roll it back to their community.
Mr Bannatyne described Ms Jones and Mr Brown as "fantastic". Mr Pang was in India on a research project related to the Ross.
Ms Jones said last night: "Every single one of them (the dragons) wants to see this out there and wants to see it benefiting real people as soon as possible."
The Ross will be field-tested over the next year.
Two online retailers have expressed interest in marketing the Ross as a "gift with conscience".
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