ACT scales its focus beyond COVID-19 to healthcare, education, environment, and women’s participation in the workforce
ACT in 2020 enabled 54 Indian startups to build solutions for fighting COVID-19. It has now expanded its focus to build solutions for healthcare, environment, education and women’s participation in the workforce. To know more about ACT and know how you can be a part of driving social change, join the ACT Summit 2021 on March 4.
In March 2020, the Indian startup ecosystem - founders and VCs came together to launch ACT, a Rs 100 crore grant to power startups building and deploying solutions to combat COVID-19. ACT focused on three main objectives - i) to provide grants to tech companies building COVID-19-related solutions; ii) to connect businesses to local, state and national governments, and NGOs for fighting COVID-19; and iii) help businesses scale up.
It powered the efforts of 54 startups across 102 projects including , Healthians, Portea Medical, Clovia, Ethereal Machines, and Dozee (Turtle Shell Technologies) among many others.
ACT in 2021
ACT is now a social change movement by the startup ecosystem in India, enabling changemakers to give their time, talent and resources to mobilize solutions that address societal problems at scale. It has expanded its mandate to cover healthcare, education, environment, and women’s participation in the workforce.
ACT for Healthcare: There’s a lot of work ahead in terms of vaccinations and new mutations of the virus that need to be addressed and ACT will continue working on the COVID response with partners. ACT for Healthcare will now expand its focus to address Tuberculosis, Mental Health, and diagnosis and treatment for Cancer.
ACT for Education: ACT-EdTech Ambition Fund will fund innovation with core goals of reducing learning poverty and preparing learners for life.
ACT for Environment: The fund will support organisations working towards market adoption and mainstreaming of market-tested innovations, with a measurable environmental benefit and an ability to be a force multiplier in the four areas of Air, Water, Waste and Land.
ACT for Women: It will work on gender equality practices which are vital to economic growth, prosperity and competitiveness with the aim to make the ecosystem more inclusive, and increase the participation of women in the workforce, and in decision making roles.
Join us at the ACT Summit 2021 on March 4 with leading startup founders, venture capitalists, activists and changemakers to talk about how we plan to deploy India’s inventive startup resources to enable social change at scale across these four focus areas.
“We were doubtful if we would be able to get support for paying salaries of healthcare workers. However ACT’s support came at a very crucial time. It was the fuel to the car that DFY and Delhi government had put together which made the entire project possible.” - Dr. Ravikant Singh, Founder, Doctors For You (DFY)
Ecosystem leaders such as Anjali Bansal (Avaana Capital), Asyia Kazmi (BMGF), Geeta Goel (MSDF), Girish Mathrubootham (), GV Ravishankar (), Meena Ganesh (), Mohit Bhatnagar (Sequoia India), Mukesh Bansal (), Nithin Kamath (), Rohini Nilekani (Arghyam), Sandeep Singhal () and Shekhar Kirani (Accel) will talk about their journey with ACT, their learnings from the community, and the plans for 2021.
ACT is supported by ecosystem partner, Startup India and others including Consulting and .
Be a cofounder of social change
The ACT community believes that collaborative entrepreneurship and the passion and resilience of the startup ecosystem can help solve societal problems at scale. And that everyone can make a difference.
If you are an entrepreneur, an innovator, a VC, or a passionate individual who has what it takes to drive change, then join us at the summit.
Join the flow. Get involved. ACT now. 4th March, 4:30 PM (IST) onwards. Register here.