Announcing the Winners of Africa’s 1st Edition Of The SolarX Startup Challenge

In collaboration with Invest India, the International Solar Alliance (ISA) launched the first edition of the SolarX Startup Challenge, focused on the African region. The challenge was focused on promoting innovation and discovering local solutions, with the over-arching objective of capacity building within the entrepreneurial ecosystem. 

The SolarX Startup Challenge 2022-23 highlighted innovations that are implementable, cost-effective, and scalable solutions to some of the persistent challenges in the solar sector. With climate change, energy access, and energy security amongst the world’s most critical issues today, solar power continues to be one of the lowest costs and most economical solutions for adding energy generation capacities.

Invest India, in partnership with the International Solar Alliance (ISA), launched the SolarX Startup Challenge at the 27th session of the Conference of Parties (COP27) in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2022.

Aimed at enhancing the startup ecosystem in Africa, the challenge offered a threefold opportunity:

– Attracting investments in the solar energy sector.

– Thinning the gap in the energy crisis.

– Building the local startup ecosystem to develop innovative solutions.  

The challenge has produced 20 winning startups, each receiving a cash grant of USD 15 K from ISA. They also have access to the market through an in-house acceleration program designed to assist selected innovators. These startups will be completing the acceleration programme and are ready for the pitch session scheduled for November 7, 2023, in Nairobi. 

Angel Investors, Climate and sustainability funds interested in being part of the pitch sessions (both physical and virtual) can get in touch with the Invest India team at [email protected]. For more details on the startup profiles and information about the company, please get in touch with [email protected].