The focus is on supporting innovations that emerge from communities and are rooted in the lived experiences of farmers, women, youth, artisans, and micro-entrepreneurs, with the potential to improve productivity, reduce drudgery, enhance climate resilience, and create sustainable income opportunities. Through this collaboration, SELCO Foundation aims to address the challenges faced by grassroots innovators in validating, refining, and scaling their technologies by providing access to technical support, field-testing opportunities, ecosystem partnerships, and enabling pathways for wider adoption. By strengthening community-led innovation and enabling solutions that are designed with and for rural communities, SELCO Foundation seeks to foster an inclusive innovation ecosystem where grassroots knowledge, local ingenuity, and community participation drive the development and adoption of sustainable livelihood solutions at scale.

About the Program 

Communities from resource constraints regions are among the first to experience the impacts of climate change, facing challenges such as declining productivity, resource scarcity, climate variability, labour costs and limited access to affordable and context-appropriate technologies. With nearly 70% of India's population residing in rural areas and over 40% dependent on agriculture and allied sectors for their livelihoods, climate-related shocks such as droughts, heatwaves, and erratic rainfall continue to exacerbate vulnerabilities. These challenges directly affect livelihoods, particularly for farmers, women, youth, artisans, and micro-entrepreneurs.

At the same time, regional communities possess deep contextual knowledge and are often at the forefront of practical problem solutions at community level. Grassroots innovators emerging from the community play a critical role in solving problems that enhance productivity, reduce drudgery, strengthen climate resilience, and improve rural incomes. They can be reliable, easily accessible and understand the problems an requirement more than any other external stakeholder can imagine

However, despite their significant contribution, the grassroots innovators enterprises often lack the space, resources and networks to turn ideas into scalable solutions. As a result, many promising innovations struggle to reach scale, limiting their ability to benefit larger communities and contribute to broader social and economic development.

The Community Innovation Hub (CIH) bridges this gap by providing a collaborative ecosystem where innovation is nurtured at the grassroots level. By bringing together diverse stakeholders, youth, businesses, NGOs and government, the CIH catalyzes locallydriven solutions that are contextually relevant, sustainable and impactful.

Scope of Work: 

Shortlisted enterprises may choose to work on all or a part of the activities listed below: 

❖ Technology piloting, building proof-of-concept 

❖ Prototype building, testing 

❖ Deployment and scaling the livelihood technologies 

❖ Unlocking relevant schemes and finance 

❖ Conducting research and documentation 

❖ Company Registration and other legal compliances 

❖ Creating training modules 

❖ Conducting awareness and orientation workshops with end users, Financial Institutions and NGOs users 

❖ End user awareness activities like workshop, village meet-ups, events/melas

Selection and Evaluation Criteria: In addition to the filled application form, SELCO Foundation will also be evaluating the applications based on the following criteria: 

❖ Innovator- enterprises intend: Community driven, have a strong intend to support communities 

❖ Innovativeness of the solution: Assessment of the novelty, relevance, and technical soundness of the proposed idea or technology. The originality, clarity of problemsolution fits, and feasibility for prototyping or validation. 

❖ Scalability: Future adaptability and replication potential of the innovation across crops, geographies, or user segments; consider early cost structure and market viability. 

❖ Impact Strategy: The expected social, economic, and climate benefits such as improved income, reduced post-harvest losses, lower drudgery, or enhanced resilience.

Application Process and Proposal Submission: If your enterprise is interested in collaborating with SELCO Foundation, kindly fill the application form shared below with relevant details: https://forms.gle/9vMtjbkJ2X5aByA49 

Any further queries please write to procurement@selcofoundation.org  with a subject line: “Community Innovation Support Program”