The startup ecosystem in India has witnessed significant expansion over the past five years, with a particularly thrilling development being the rise of female entrepreneurs. According to findings from the ‘Women in India’s Startup Ecosystem Report‘ (WISER), startups led by women have experienced notable success, now comprising 18% of the country’s thriving startup scene.
While this is a great achievement for women entrepreneurs and the Indian economy, the share of funding received by women-led startups says something else. There is an inversely proportional relationship observed between the number of women-led startups and the funding received by them in the last five years. According to a report by Tracxn, Indian female-led startups raised a total of USD 1 billion in 2023 across 185 rounds, compared to USD 4.35 billion in 2022 across 460 rounds, USD 6.21 billion in 2021 across 562 rounds and USD 3.55 billion in 2020 across 472 rounds. DealStreetAsia’s report points out that startups founded by women received only 0.3% of India’s total venture capital funding.
To challenge this scenario and to empower women in their entrepreneurial journey, Cisco (India Cash Grant Program) and Villgro— a social enterprise incubator — have come up with a joint initiative ‘Tvaran,’ whose intent is to provide access to markets and access to finance for women-led startups in the climate action space.
Launched in October 2022, the program conducted a dedicated outreach to identify women-led enterprises offering innovative solutions across sectors such as renewable energy, water and waste management, climate-smart agriculture, and overall eco-friendly businesses. The startups were provided support to help prepare their go-to-market plan with expert masterclasses, mentoring, market partnerships for scaling business, and access to finance.
Accelerating Eco-friendly businesses
While climate change is warming up our planet, several studies have shown that its effects are not felt equally. Climate Change affects women more than men due to a host of social, economic, and cultural reasons. It is also proven that women are better leaders in time of crisis, especially when it is about protecting our planet. However, the solutions designed to address climate change often exclude women.
Tvaran tries to combine two important issues by supporting women entrepreneurs and making them climate warriors. 2023 was the hottest year on record and with the amount of greenhouse gases emitted every day, it is only going to get worse. Rising temperatures contributed to a large number of extreme weather events around the world in 2023, including heatwaves, floods, droughts, and wildfires.
Tvaran helps early-stage women entrepreneurs amplify their market presence, helping them scale their businesses through mentoring and access to funding. It also significantly promotes sustainability through innovative climate-resilient solutions. Explaining the step-wise approach of the first cohort, Kalyani Krishna, manager Gender Inclusion, Villgro, shares, “The first step was to identify startups offering innovative solutions across sectors, such as renewable energy, water and waste management, and climate-smart agriculture. We received 140 applications.”
From the 140 applications that were received, 11 unique startups were selected. These 11 startups were provided support for four weeks to help prepare their Go-To-Market plan with masterclasses & mentoring. By March 2023, an expert Jury evaluated the startups on their business, readiness for the market, role of technology & impact to arrive at the first cohort of 7 startups.
“During the acceleration period between April to September 2023, the startups were provided with the financial support of 20 lakhs to implement their go-to-market plan. They were also provided access to mentors from Cisco for expert insights on technology and strategy. The program helped them establish connections with relevant market partners, investors, and VCs leveraging Villgro’s & Cisco’s networks for commercialisation and scaling.” Kalyani shares.
Harish Krishnan, Managing Director and Chief Policy Officer of Cisco India & SAARC, said, “while we relied on the existing data that was available around social impact being addressed by women-led startups, what was interesting was how they are all leveraging technology to address the problem. At Cisco, we champion this ethos, believing in technology’s power to drive an inclusive future. This resonates with our core purpose to power an inclusive and equitable future for all. Every Tvaran participant embodies this disruptive spirit, operating at the nexus of technology and entrepreneurship.”
The stories of each of the seven startups demonstrate Tvaran’s success. One of the startups, Bharat Krushi Seva which is a tech-enabled mobile platform, provides farmers with real-time data and insights on crop growth, soil moisture, weather patterns, and factors that impact crop health and productivity. They also provide a marketplace for farmers to procure agri inputs and sell their farm outputs at market prices. Through the acceleration program, they have now scaled their operations to two districts in Pune and Solapur and also piloted two new tech features. This onboarded 400 new farmers and converted 500 acres of farmland through climate-smart practices.
Similarly, Climatesense brings drone technology, satellite data, and AI algorithms together to combat the problem of deforestation. Through the program, they leverage Cisco’s expertise in technology to improve the efficiency of their drone technology to survey larger land parcels with 90% accuracy.
Through Tvaran’s intervention, Green Grahi Solutions, a startup that upcycles food residues into high-quality specialty ingredients for animal and plant nutrition using insect bio-conversion processes, was able to increase plant production by 30% while mobilizing 3,000 farmers for farm trials. In addition to this, they also carried out market validation of their insect-based fertilizer in four districts of Karnataka through market connection facilitated through the program.
MOWO Fleet decided to act on the fact that only one percent of commercial driving licenses are held by women. They enable women to take up last-mile commute and delivery services in 2 or 3-wheeler electric vehicles. Through Tvaran, they were able to onboard 36 women drivers and provide them with a 60% increase in income.
Another innovative startup,GreenDelight Innovations, is addressing the problem of plastic in sanitary pads by replacing them with 100% organic kenaf fibers, which are highly absorbent, anti-bacterial, and have a feathery soft cover.
Through Tvaran, they implemented their GTM plan to increase sales through their website and two new e-commerce platforms. This effort has helped them with a 55% increase in revenue. Through the market partnerships facilitated by the program, the team was able to also build B2B partnerships for large-scale commercial sales of their biodegradable sanitary pads.
Similarly, Swachha Eco-solutions, which focuses on waste management, works on collecting, transporting, aggregating, and recycling waste plastic from Households and Industries. After being a part of Tvaran, they were able to recycle over 55000 tonnes of plastic waste which would have otherwise gone to landfills or aquatic dumps.
Another waste management startup, KNP Arises, is building a marketplace for the disposal of used cooking oil. All the collected cooking oil is then converted into biodiesel. Through TVARAN, KNP Arises expanded its operations to south India, thus enabling them to collect 30 tonnes of used cooking oil from over 250 vendors to be recycled into biofuel every month. As the team was also looking to raise funds, the program also facilitated a connection with The Chennai Angels, through whom they were able to raise equity funding of 3 crores.
The success stories of startups like these fulfill the vision of Villgro and Cisco to support women-led startups, solving complex challenges related to climate change and inspiring a generation of job creators. The success of the first cohort of Tvaran has opened more opportunities for all of us to build an ecosystem with the right partnerships that can make it easier for women-led startups to succeed. The scale of the upcoming programs is only going to get bigger, with women entrepreneurs becoming an inspiration to other women to join the workforce and be at the forefront of climate action.
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