The problem
India has some of the most polluted air in the world, and fine particles known as PM2.5 are a leading health risk. Yet for years, the country’s air quality data came mainly from expensive reference stations in large cities. According to Airveda, a partner in the same rural project, about 65% of India’s rural population had no air quality monitoring data at all.
That matters because pollution does not stop at city limits. Crop burning, household cooking fuels, brick kilns, dust and regional haze affect villages and small towns as much as metros. Without local data, district officials cannot see where pollution comes from or whether clean air plans work. Construction dust in fast-growing cities is a second blind spot that regulators struggle to police.
The product
Respirer Living Sciences is a Pune company that builds air quality sensors, networks and analytics. It set up an air quality network in Delhi in 2015 and says it has since deployed about 2,500 devices across more than 25 cities worldwide.
Its Atmos monitors measure several air pollutants and weather conditions in real time, using IoT and narrowband IoT connectivity. The company says its devices are scientifically validated against Federal Equivalent Method grade instruments, need little power, are designed for easy installation with minimal maintenance, and are now also available in fully solar-powered versions. Data flows to a dashboard with charts, cluster maps and alerts, and Respirer can also run deployment, monitoring and reporting as a service.
For Mumbai’s construction rules, Respirer offers the AtmosAQ-Pro model. The company says it was one of 13 providers chosen by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), that its monitors have been certified for data accuracy by IIT Bombay, and that it has completed more than 75 BMC compliance deployments.
How it works
- Site. Monitors are placed to represent a block, a city ward, a factory fence line or a construction site.
- Sense. Low-cost sensors measure PM2.5, other pollutants, temperature and humidity continuously.
- Send. Readings travel over mobile networks to a cloud server.
- Calibrate. Data is checked and corrected against reference-grade instruments and calibration models.
- Show. Dashboards and public displays present live readings and trends.
- Act. Officials, site managers and researchers use the data to find hotspots and trigger action.
Timeline
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 2015 | Respirer sets up an air quality network in Delhi |
| 2019 | A South African mining services client begins using Atmos devices |
| Oct 2022 | IIT Kanpur’s Centre of Excellence ATMAN set up, with Project AMRIT as a flagship |
| 4 Mar 2024 | Bihar’s rural air quality dashboard, built with IIT Kanpur, launched by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar |
| 2026 | BMC tightens construction dust enforcement and plans third-party checks of site monitors |
Impact and numbers
Respirer’s biggest project is AMRIT, short for Ambient air quality Monitoring over Rural areas using Indigenous Technology. It is the flagship of ATMAN, a centre at IIT Kanpur proposed by the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor, supported by funders including Bloomberg Philanthropies, Open Philanthropy and the Clean Air Fund. IIT Kanpur announced a network of 1,400 sensor nodes across rural Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, built with two Indian start-ups, Respirer and Airveda.
Airveda reports that the project has installed 534 nodes in Bihar and 826 in Uttar Pradesh, and that it supplied 690 of the monitors. Respirer supplied devices and helped build the Bihar dashboard. Each of Bihar’s 534 blocks now has a sensor giving live PM2.5, temperature and humidity data to division, district and block administrators, a first for any Indian state.
In Surat, Respirer ran a 20-device city network with a target uptime of 90%, under an Indo-German development cooperation project with GIZ and the Gujarat Pollution Control Board, linked to India’s National Clean Air Programme. Data was published on the city’s website.
Calibration has been a research focus. In the SATVAM initiative, with IIT Kanpur, IIT Bombay, Duke University, Intel, India’s Department of Science and Technology and the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, low-cost PM2.5 and gas sensors were deployed in cities from Delhi and Mumbai to Guwahati and Kanyakumari. Four of six sensors were moved to new sites midway, to test whether calibration models still worked in very different conditions, and a new local calibration algorithm was developed.
Abroad, a South African mining services manager told Respirer he has used Atmos devices since 2019 to help a manganese mine in the Northern Cape meet emission reporting rules, because real-time data shows rising dust levels days before laboratory filter results would.
Honest caveats
Low-cost means extra care. Sensor monitors drift and react to humidity. Their value depends on calibration against reference stations, which projects such as SATVAM, run with IIT Kanpur, IIT Bombay and others, have worked to improve.
Placement and trust. In Mumbai, the BMC said in 2026 it would appoint a third-party agency to check the location and calibration of construction site monitors, and whether readings reflect real site conditions. It issued 135 show-cause and 93 stop-work notices in February alone.
Shared credit. AMRIT was built by IIT Kanpur with two suppliers. Respirer’s share of the 1,360 installed nodes is not published separately.
Data is not action. Monitoring shows the problem; cutting pollution depends on enforcement and investment.
What’s next
ATMAN plans to scale its rural network beyond Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and to use sensor data with satellite imagery and machine learning to predict PM2.5 at finer resolution. Respirer is expanding solar-powered monitors and compliance services for builders and industry.
Why it matters for Europe and green buyers
For Europe, the lesson is about cheap, dense networks. EU cities and research groups increasingly add sensor networks around official stations, and India’s block-level grid shows how far that approach can scale. European funders such as GIZ already back this work, and buyers of sensor-based air services can learn from India’s calibration and verification rules.
For India, a monitor in every rural block turns air pollution from an urban issue into a district responsibility. Local data helps officials target crop burning, kilns and dust, and gives citizens a way to hold them to account.
Sources & image credits
- Respirer Living Sciences, company website. https://respirer.in/
- Respirer, “Project AMRIT”. https://respirer.in/our-projects/project-amrit
- Respirer, “Project Surat City”. https://respirer.in/our-projects/project-surat
- Respirer newsletter, “Respirer’s monitoring scales up, from rural areas in Bihar to mines in South Africa”, 2024. https://respirer.substack.com/p/respirers-monitoring-scales-up-from
- IIT Kanpur, “IIT Kanpur establishes CoE named ATMAN”. https://www.iitk.ac.in/establishes-coe-named-atman-for-monitoring-air-quality
- Airveda, “Airveda supplies 690 sensors for AMRIT rural air quality network in Bihar and UP”. https://www.airveda.com/blog/iit-kanpur
- Times of India, “BMC plans to appoint a third-party agency to check AQI monitors at construction sites across Mumbai”, 2026. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/bmc-plans-to-appoint-a-third-party-agency-to-check-aqi-monitors-at-construction-sites-across-mumbai/articleshow/129683107.cms
- Respirer, “BMC Compliance”. https://respirer.in/solutions/bmc-compliance
- Respirer, “Project SATVAM”. https://respirer.in/our-projects/project-satvam
- Wikimedia Commons, “Smog in the skies of Delhi, India.jpg”. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Smog_in_the_skies_of_Delhi,_India.jpg
Images: “Smog in the skies of Delhi, India”, wili hybrid, Connaught Place, Delhi, uploaded 2008, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustrative: shows Delhi smog, not a Respirer monitor.
