The electricity gap in India’s rural economy can be addressed through clean energy innovations that have a market potential of over $50 billion. Currently, only about 20 such innovations exist. Their deployment on the ground is limited, as entrepreneurs struggle to scale up at the pace required to address the market need.

Powering Livelihoods aims to boost rural economy through enhanced penetration of decentralised clean energy powered livelihoods at scale. The programme will support five enterprises to complete a commercial pilot and use the results to catalyse the sector through the following key streams of activity:

• Financial support to enterprise (Grant): ‘Tranched’ grant support to each enterprise to kick-off the commercial pilot and to have financial leverage to raise funds in the form of equity/debt.
• Non-financial support to enterprise (TA): Based on rigorous needs assessment, enterprises would be provided support services, including mentoring, capacity building, and fund-raising to effectively undertake the commercial pilots.
• Sectoral growth support: Create sectoral momentum by gaining evidence from the pilots at a meaningful scale and by disseminating the evidence among key stakeholders such as financiers, policymakers, investors and other market enablers.