Why We Started iClear: The Untold Story
05, Sep 2026
Before iClear was a company, it was a question we kept running into on the ground, in homes across Kenya, that nobody seemed to have a good answer for: is the water actually safe to drink?
iClear on the Tech Trends podcast
Our co-founder, Zhong Yanxiong, spent six years working across African markets before he ever thought about water. He was Tecno's country manager, first in Uganda, then Nigeria, Rwanda, and eventually Kenya, and the job took him well beyond boardrooms. It took him into homes, rural and urban, doing the kind of everyday research that most companies skip: understanding not just how people used their phones, but how they actually lived.
“We did not just try to understand everything relevant to mobile. We tried to understand everyday life. And we found water was an issue.”
Zhong Yanxiong reflecting on the years of fieldwork across African markets that led him to founding iClear.
That single observation became the seed of everything we do today. Across large parts of Kenya, access to water didn't mean access to safe water, and there was no reliable way for an ordinary family to know the difference.
When we started looking closely at the market in 2022, we found something familiar: most water purifier sellers operated the way any appliance retailer does. A customer would buy a unit, pay at the till, and leave. What happened after the sale was, too often, someone else's problem.
We had visited enough households to hear the same complaint repeated: people had bought water treatment devices before, and the supplier simply disappeared once the sale was made. No maintenance. No filter replacement. No one to call when something went wrong.
“People drink water every day. We didn't want the purchase of our product to become a once-off action for the customer.”
That's the gap we built iClear to close, not just selling a machine, but standing behind it for as long as a family needs clean water, which is to say, indefinitely.
As Nairobi has grown faster than its municipal water infrastructure, more new buildings and estates have turned to private boreholes rather than piped supply. But borehole water varies enormously depending on where you are, and in several regions, including areas around Naivasha and Nakuru, fluoride levels run high enough to cause visible dental fluorosis over years of exposure.
Most Kenyans already know this. Fluoride is taught in primary school. What we found, again and again, was that knowing about a water problem and being able to act on it are two very different things when rent, school fees, and medical bills are already stretching a household's budget.
“Fluoride issue is not the first priority concern in their list. They know it, but not all of us are able to put it in our budget plan this month or this week.”
That's exactly where we believe a company can make a real difference: by making safe water affordable and simple enough that it stops being a trade-off families have to make.
We didn't want to be a machine center. We wanted to be a service company, and that distinction shapes everything about how we operate.
For households, we sell full ownership. Our flagship iClear Standard is KSh 25,000, and that price includes delivery, professional installation, and a one-year warranty. Some of our very first customers from 2022 are still using their original units today, four years on, producing clean water every day.
For offices, we run an annual service subscription instead. The hardware stays with iClear, and our own full-time technicians, never outsourced, handle scheduled filter changes, waterway disinfection, leak checks, and maintenance throughout the year. Almost every one of our office clients renews for a second year, which tells us the model is working the way we designed it to.
Across both models, we try not to overwhelm customers with technical choice. Most people don't want a lecture on reverse osmosis. They want to tell us what they need, and have us come back with a solution that fits their budget.
Our systems are manufactured in China using German-originated filtration technology, but they aren't a generic product dropped into a new market. We deliberately stripped away unnecessary features and reinforced the filtration stages specifically for Kenyan water conditions, because water here is simply different from what these systems were originally designed around.
We're honest that we don't yet have a decade of Kenyan field data to prove a specific lifespan claim. iClear is four years old. What we can say is that units installed in 2022 remain in daily use today, and with proper filter maintenance, we're confident in a lifespan well beyond that early benchmark.
Our most effective channel has never been advertising. It's our existing customers. Reverse osmosis and long-term service are hard to explain in the abstract, but once someone becomes a customer and understands what the water actually tastes and feels like, they tend to tell people.
“Every week we have new customers who tell us: I went to my friend's home, saw the machine under the sink, tasted the water, and decided to call you myself.”
That's the kind of growth we're proudest of, because it means the people using our systems every day are the ones recommending us.
We currently operate branches in Nairobi and Nakuru, with a new branch opening soon in Mombasa, extending our installation and service coverage to the coast. Beyond Kenya, we launched in Nigeria in 2024 through a franchise partnership, and a third country is already in the pipeline.
We're also expanding what we offer beyond drinking water purification, toward whole-house filtration and water softeners, driven by direct customer demand rather than simply what's available to import. We test and survey what the market genuinely needs before we bring anything new to it.
Our mission is simple to state and hard to fully achieve: everyone should have access to clean water. We believe that's a right, not a privilege reserved for those who can afford it easily.
We try to stay grounded about how we talk about that mission. We're a commercial company solving a real problem sustainably, not a campaign. We'd rather deliver than tell a story about delivering.
If you're weighing whether now is the right time to switch from bottled or dispenser water, our honest answer is: it depends on your household and your budget, and there's no need to rush. If you can take on the upfront cost of a system, the long-term savings and water quality speak for themselves. If now isn't the right time, that's alright too. We'll be here when it is.
Watch the full conversation: iClear on the Tech Trends podcast
Four years in, over 10,000 customers across two countries, and a Mombasa branch on the way. We're still a young company, but we're building the kind of business we'd want to still be running in eighty years.
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Keywords: iClear story, iClear founder, water purifier company kenya, reverse osmosis kenya, about iClear, Zhong Yanxiong
Water Purification & Treatment Specialists
David Ochieng, a water purification specialist at iClear Wellife Services Ltd, has extensive experience delivering safe and reliable water treatment solutions for homes and offices across Kenya.
