At ACT, we believe that technology has a role to play in solving some of the most complex social and environmental challenges we face today. Over the last three years, we’ve had the privilege of interacting with 1500+ social entrepreneurs and supporting 50+ organizations through a combination of grant capital and access to network connections and collaborative platforms. We’ve helped founders identify growth pathways, unearthing business models that serve as proof points that technology can enable high quality, sustainable social impact at scale.

At the same time, we know we need many more passionate and talented founders to solve these systemic, complex problem statements. But building tech-first and impact-first is tough. One critical gap is the lack of early-stage capital for innovators to build and test contextual solutions, and the absence of build funding means founders also struggle to attract high quality tech talent during the early stages.

Hence, we’re piloting a different approach to our business as usual – we are looking to partner with aspiring social entrepreneurs to translate innovative ideas into scalable solutions. 

1. You must be a full-time founder with a legally incorporated entity in India.
2. You must be impact first and aim to create measurable impact across one of the below areas:
   1. Focus on Bharat as target audience: Solutions targeting underserved communities (households with monthly incomes below INR 25,000) to boost education, livelihood, health or gender outcomes.
   2. Focus on decarbonisation and/or water security: Solutions aimed at enabling India’s progress across both these goals by addressing the issue at source for outsized environmental impact.
   3. Focus on enabling the social impact ecosystem: Technology-driven initiatives that enable and build the capacity of social enterprises, NGOs, and other impact-first organizations, thereby strengthening the broader ecosystem for social change.
3. You should have a clear problem statement based on user research and a tech-first approach as a solution to the problem statement.
4. You should have a clear roadmap to develop software technology (standalone or integrated within a hardware product). We are not looking for deployment ready solutions here.

If this is you, please reach out to us with some details by filling out this form, and if there is alignment, ACT will provide support in the form of: 

1. Capital for technology build: Up to INR 30 lakh grant support over a 6-month period
2. Tech guidance: Dedicated tech advisory aligned to your journey towards building a minimum viable prototype (MVP)
3. Fundraising and business model refinement: Targeted mentor connections on fundraising and business model strategy