A Platform to Win an Award of INR 1 Crore on Addressing Developmental Challenges in India

Deadline: 4 August 2019

The Millennium Alliance (MA) is inviting applications from startups having innovative affordable solutions that address developmental challenges in Agriculture, Health, Education, Cleanenergy and WASH for delivery at the last mile.

The MA is an inclusive platform to leverage Indian creativity, expertise, and resources to identify and scale innovative solutions being developed and tested in India to address development challenges that will benefit base of the pyramid populations across India and the world.

The MA is a network to bring together various actors within India’s social innovation ecosystem including, but not limited to, social innovators, philanthropy organizations, social venture capitalists, angel investors, donors, service providers, and corporate foundations, to stimulate and facilitate financial contributions from the private and public sectors and offer a range of support to innovators.

Under FICCI’s leadership and in partnership with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Technology Development Board (TDB), and other MA partners, the Alliance will provide innovators with services such as seed funding, grants, incubation and accelerator services, networking opportunities, business support services, knowledge exchange, and technical assistance, and will facilitate access to equity, debt, and other capital. Through the Millennium Alliance, USAID, FICCI, TDB, and other partners, will help realize India’s role as a global innovation laboratory.

Objectives

Provide a platform to leverage Indian creativity, expertise and resources to:

Identify game changing innovations: The Alliance intends to identify breakthrough innovations that address long felt developmental issues in a more effective and/or economical manner.
Rigorously test promising solutions: The Alliance encourages innovators to rigorously test and evaluate their innovative solutions and select those that have the maximum developmental impact in a cost efficient and effective manner.
Scale innovations that work: The Alliance aims to support innovations with wider societal appeal and help scale it to a level that it reaches and affects the needy population.

Focus Sectors

Education
Water and sanitation
Health
Agriculture / food Security
Clean energy / Climate change
Others

Nature of Awards

Millennium Alliance offers three types of grants: Stage 1, Stage 2, and South-South. Funding amount for Stages 1 is fixed at Rs. 30 lakhs and, for Stage 2, it is upto Rs. 1 Crore. South-South grant size is determined on a case-by-case basis. Applicants are required to apply for one of these three grant stages. An applicant who desires to scale the model in India as well as in another developing country (besides India) should apply to stage 2 and the south-south category separately.

Eligibility Criteria

Local private and non-governmental entities (must be registered in India) They can be :
- Partnerships under the Indian Partnership Act, 1932
- Sole proprietorships
- Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs)
- Family Owned Businesses/ HUFs
- Companies registered under the Companies Act, 1956
For profit educational institutions
Non-profit educational institutions
- Partnerships under the Indian Partnership Act, 1932
- Sole proprietorships
- Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs)
- Family Owned Businesses/ HUFs
- Companies registered under the Companies Act, 1956
Private Individual(s)
- Private Individual(s) must:
  - Be legal residents of India
  - Be 18 years of age or older
  - Have lived in India for the full calendar year leading up to the submission of their application
  - Currently live in India at the time of submitting their application
Consortia of the above
Proposals involving assistance for the following purposes will not be eligible for MA awards
- Military, law enforcement, security forces, or prison-related purposes
- Assistance or support for terrorists or terrorist organizations
- Support for the performance of abortions as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions; lobbying for or against abortion
- Involuntary sterilizations or any family planning activity involving coercion, including use of incentive payments for family planning users or pre-determined targets or quotas for service providers
- Promotion of the sale or export of tobacco
- Activities that contribute to violation of international workers’ rights; or activities that would induce U.S. firms to relocate in a manner likely to reduce the number of U.S. jobs
- Support for commodity exports, including agricultural exports, if the commodity is likely to be in surplus on world markets and substantial injury will be caused to U.S. producers of the same, similar, or competing commodities
- Tropical forest degradation
- Publicity, propaganda or lobbying in the U.S. and
- Activities with environmental impact that cannot be adequately mitigated