The GSMA is looking for start-ups, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and social enterprises in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Caribbean, Latin America and Eastern Europe that leverage digital technology, particularly mobile, to deliver climate resilience and adaptation solutions to and with low-income and vulnerable populations.
WORTH
Successful projects will receive an equity-free grant of between £100,000 and £250,000 to scale their innovation over a 15 to 18 month period.
ELIGIBILITY
- Be a small and growing enterprise or start-up leveraging digital technology, especially mobile, to deliver climate resilience and adaptation solutions to low-income and vulnerable populations in countries that are eligible to receive official development assistance (see section 3). Have active users and commercial revenue (users and revenue from any products or services offered by the organisation) in at least one eligible country.
- Be an entity registered and operating in the country of project implementation (whether domestic or foreign-owned or a joint venture). In cases where responsibility for service delivery lies with a downstream partner, rather than the applicant,for example service delivery by a local government, it may be acceptable for the applicant to be registered in a country other than that of project implementation.
- Be fully compliant with relevant business licensing, taxation, employee and other regulations in all applicable countries of grant project operation.
- Be registered and have a bank account in the country where they will receive the grant money (if not the same as the project implementation country).
- Be an eligible entity (as set out in section 1) and demonstrate that a majority of their income is derived from commercial activities. Early-stage companies who have not reached this threshold will need to demonstrate a reliable path to sustainability via commercial activities that generate revenue to be considered.
- Commit to providing 25% to 50% matching funding depending on the total grant amount requested (see section 7).
- Only one organisation can apply for funding and become a grantee. Applicants are encouraged to have downstream partners who have a role in the project as per the GSMA’s Downstream Partner Guidelines. In case government entities are grant project partners, they cannot be a sub-recipient of the grant.
The following category are particularly encouraged to apply:
- Female founders, and applicants with good representation of women at all levels of the organisation.
- Local entrepreneurs, and applicants with good representation of local talent at all levels of the organisation.
- Applicants who have partnerships with relevant local stakeholders (e.g. community-based organisations) to deliver the project on the ground.
- Applicants who proactively demonstrate their solution disproportionately and actively reaches more female users.
- Applicants who have a clear understanding how their solution improves the resilience and adaptative capacity of vulnerable communities and have proactively taken steps to set targets and systematically measure these impacts.
DEADLINE: January 9 2022
To apply and for more information visit here
