ACT as a platform for collective action.
ACT runs as a venture-philanthropy platform with three operating pillars — Incubating Innovations, Building Capacity and Generating Knowledge. Below is the full programme stack that sits underneath those pillars: challenge grants, fellowships, climate pledges, implementer networks, summits and original research, each one designed to compound impact across the founders we back and the wider social-impact ecosystem.
The three pillars
How the platform compounds impact
Incubating Innovations
We design challenge grants, pilot incubation programmes and acceleration tracks that point the ecosystem at hard social problem statements — and give aspiring entrepreneurs the structure and capital to turn early ideas into scale-ready solutions.
Building Capacity
We deepen the impact of every founder we back through personalised support and collaborative programmes — portfolio support, fellowships, tech-advisor matching, climate pledges and implementer networks — that let stakeholders contribute meaningfully alongside us.
Generate Knowledge
We run programmes and produce knowledge, research and playbooks that accelerate the pace of change for the wider social sector — convening operators, funders and government partners around what is actually working.
01 · Incubating Innovations
Pointing the ecosystem at hard problems
Challenge grants and pilot incubation programmes that draw attention to social problem statements and inspire aspiring entrepreneurs to turn ideas into scale-ready solutions.
A programme by ACT For EnvironmentIndia Clean Air Challenge
The India Clean Air Challenge (ICAC) is a $1 million competition — designed as a partnership between government and the startup community — to identify and scale clean-air innovations capable of addressing India's air-pollution challenges.
Led by ACT For Environment, ICAC's mission is to create pathways for, and demonstrate the value proposition of, clean-air technologies for both government and industry. The challenge statements span mobility & transport, sustainable buildings, waste management, agricultural emissions, carbon capture, air-quality monitoring and industrial decarbonisation.
Winners receive business advisory and mentorship from the ACT network, and are introduced to investors, corporates and government bodies to enable wide-scale adoption of their solutions.
ICAC 2022 Winners
ICAC 2022 Partners
02 · Building Capacity
Deepening impact, founder by founder
Personalised support and collaborative programmes that let founders, mentors, sector experts and implementers contribute meaningfully alongside ACT — and turn each portfolio investment into ecosystem-wide leverage.
Portfolio Support
We build strong, long-running relationships with the founders we back — sitting close enough to understand the most pressing problems on their plate at any given moment, and giving them customised strategic and operational support across product, business roadmap, go-to-market and team.
Our ability to facilitate one-to-one advisory relationships and open up best-in-class industry mentorship has become one of the highest-leverage value adds ACT brings as an early-stage funder — and a real reason founders choose to work with the platform.
ACT Fellowship Program
The ACT Fellowship is an opportunity for early-career professionals to learn what it takes to create social impact at scale — from the driver's seat. It is a full-time, multi-month programme that lets aspiring change-makers apply venture-capital principles to philanthropy by working closely inside one of our four focus areas: ed-tech, health-tech, climate-tech or gender inclusivity.
Fellows take on a wide range of work — sector research, dealflow sourcing, due diligence, investment pitches, portfolio management, impact assessment, collaborative programmes, industry events and partnerships — building both knowledge and a live track record of applying it.
Tech Advisors For Social Change
The Tech Advisors programme helps social enterprises leverage senior industry experts to bolster their tech capabilities — while giving the advisors themselves a meaningful, time-bound way to contribute to social impact.
The twelve-week programme invites social-impact organisations — in and outside the ACT portfolio — to raise specific, scoped tech challenges that are realistically solvable within that window. ACT then solicits interest from seasoned tech experts from the for-profit and startup world, runs demo sessions on each challenge and makes the final matches based on skill fit and advisor preference.
Our Cohort
Ashay Tejwani
Dr. Raunaq Pradhan
Harendra Pathak
Kamal Govindraj
Savita Muley
Erica
Pooja Gupta
Saraswati Chandra
Bharat Ravi Kumar
Prince Jain
Mohammed
Saurabh Saha
Sneha Mitra
Venkat Shriram
Participating Social Organisations
A programme by ACT For EnvironmentGreen Startup Pledge
The Green Startup Pledge is the world's first climate pledge designed specifically for startups — and an example of India's leadership in building the green economy.
Launched at COP27 in 2022 by ACT For Environment in collaboration with BCG, GSP is a public commitment by a startup to grow both economically and ecologically — by integrating or transitioning to sustainable operations with the goal of attaining net-zero emissions by 2050.
Signatory startups benefit from frameworks that are flexible, streamlined and aligned with how a venture actually operates. A resource platform of tools, vendors and reference playbooks supports implementation — so founders can build better from the beginning, or transition economically as they grow.
Partners
ACT Implementers Network
The ACT Implementers Network strengthens the healthcare ecosystem by matching the tech needs of social enterprises serving under-served communities with ACT For Health supported innovations — and launching pilot projects that address the need gaps surfaced from the field.
The Network grew out of a healthcare needs-assessment study ACT ran in 2022, which identified the challenges healthcare providers face across screening, diagnosis, treatment and recovery — and looked at how tech-led innovation could realistically enhance public healthcare delivery.
Our goal is to demonstrate evidence-based deployment models that other stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem can then contextualise and adopt across geographies.
03 · Generate Knowledge
Turning what we learn into public goods
Programmes, research and playbooks that accelerate the pace of overall change — designed to be useful to the wider community, not just to our own portfolio.
ACT Summit
The ACT Summit is our annual convening — bringing a diverse set of stakeholders together to work through how technology, innovation and collaboration can help India address its most complex social issues across public healthcare, gender, education and environment.
Our first edition in 2023 drew nearly 200 participants — social entrepreneurs, impact investors, CSR professionals and sector experts. The shared conclusion was that technology, data and platforms, when led by mission-aligned social entrepreneurs and backed by patient, purpose-driven capital, can create sustainable social impact at a billion- user scale.
The biggest takeaway: challenging conventional wisdom on funding and forming strategic Public-Private Partnerships are critical steps for accelerating homegrown innovations and giving rise to India's next generation of social unicorns.
A programme by ACT For EducationMission Brighter Bharat
Mission Brighter Bharat is a collaborative programme by ACT For Education that aims to democratise learning by providing tablets pre-loaded with free educational content to children from under-served communities.
The initiative kicked off in 2022 with the distribution of over 600 tablets to children in grades 4 to 8 from low-income families in rural Uttarakhand. Going forward, we are focused on building knowledge about what makes a successful device-distribution model for rural India — and sharing those insights, along with the learning-outcome data, with state governments.
Partners
A Pact For Gender Parity initiative by ACT For WomenWomen in India's Startup Ecosystem Report (WISER)
WISER is the largest research study of its kind designed exclusively for Indian startups — built to help them advance gender diversity and inclusivity at the workplace.
The study unpacks the drivers of gender diversity inside the startup ecosystem — assessing the demand-side barriers to women's representation across employment levels and spotlighting the best practices that have actually moved the needle on women's participation.
Partners
Want to build a programme with us?
Funders, founders, government partners and ecosystem organisations — there is a way to plug into every pillar of the platform.
ACT Capital Foundation For Social Impact is a not-for-profit company incorporated and registered under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013 (CIN: U85300KA2021NPL148543). All donations made to ACT Capital Foundation are eligible for income-tax deduction under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act.
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