The damage to the pond "snatched away" happy childhood memories, he says -- and inspired him to become a conservationist. "I wanted to somehow see (the pond) revived to its original glory." The 33-year-old now runs the Environmentalist Foundation of India (EFI) -- a nonprofit group that restores freshwater lakes and ponds across India. Krishnamurthy set up the foundation in 2007, the same year he started working as an account associate at Google. Three years later, he quit his job to run EFI full time. It took 8 weeks to clean up the Konneri Tank, once used as a source of drinking water for local residents. The lake, in south India, was smothered with invasive weeds. Many of India's water bodies are clogged with waste -- from plastic bags to construction rubble -- and often infested with weeds. The EFI team works to clear out the garbage and restores the natural habitats of birds, frogs and native plants, giving wildlife a chance to return. Over the last 13 years, EFI has carried out restoration work on 112 lakes and ponds. Beyond these local projects, there's another reason Krishnamurthy is so passionate about his work. "India's got a water story to tell," he says. "The world has to know." Find out about more about Call to Earth and the extraordinary people working for a more sustainable future. India's water story India -- with a population of 1.3 billion people and growing -- is running out of water. According to a 2018 report by government-funded think tank NITI Aoyag, 600 million people across the country face high to extreme water stress, and around 200,000 people die every year because they lack adequate access to safe water. By 2030, it says, the demand for water in India is expected to be double the available supply. Activists say the water shortages stem from poor planning and management and are exacerbated by climate change, which has led to more droughts and floods. Suresh Rohilla, senior director of the Water Programme at the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, says that developments in public health and sanitation have improved quality of life but ramped up demand for water. "(In) big cities, around 30% to 40% of water goes into flushing toilets," he says. "Instead of using buckets for bathing now, people are using showers and bathtubs." Krishnamurthy says that EFI's primary goal is to restore lakes and ponds, but the organization's work benefits India's water supply on a small scale, because replenishing water bodies helps groundwater recharge -- a process in which water filters down from the surface through soil and rocks. He says many households depend on groundwater reserves -- digging wells inside their properties to draw supply directly into their homes. In fact, groundwater is critical to India, accounting for 80% of its water supply. Exploitation -- for domestic and agricultural use -- is depleting reserves at a worrying rate. According to the World Bank, the number of drilled tube wells in India rose from 1 million to near