India’s wastewater treatment market is positively bulging with PPP opportunities. More than 25 wastewater PPP contracts are at various stages of tendering, with at least six expected to be awarded this year, according to GWI data. The new WWTPs are mostly being tendered on either a DBO (design-build-operate) basis, or as EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contracts with an attached annuity-based O&M contract lasting from 5-15 years. Bid evaluation criteria are also shifting from a traditional focus on the lowest upfront capital cost to a lowest lifecycle cost basis. For EPC + O&M projects, bids are increasingly being evaluated on the basis of bid parameters that include capital costs, mandatory spares, O&M costs and guaranteed maximum power consumption.For wastewater reuse projects, the design-build-finance-operate-transfer (DBFOT) model, which is frequently coupled with a royalty payment, is becoming popular. Bidders can either request a grant for undertaking the project (termed a ‘positive grant’), no grant, or else they can propose to pay a royalty to the TMC (termed a ‘negative grant’), depending on the opportunities they think they can identify for the sale of treated wastewater. The government also has special programmes to provide subsidies to the sector to fund the capital cost with the view of preserving the environment.