For Immediate Release
June 20, 2022
BANGKOK – The Water and Energy for Food (WE4F) Grand Challenge South and Southeast Asia Regional Hub (S/SEA RIH) announced today the 13 winners of the second S/SEA Call for Innovations. Of the 13 selected, 8 are women-led and/or women-owned.
The second Call for Innovations awardees are from seven countries in the region and fall into three major innovation types: water-ag technology, energy-ag technology, and digital solutions that can be a combination of technologies. Together, innovators and the S/SEA RIH may impact food security, poverty reduction, gender equality, and base of the pyramid integration while promoting environmental sustainability, climate mitigation and resilience, and the protection of nature and biodiversity.
A total of $1.97 million in grants will be divided amongst the 13 innovators. In addition to the grants, innovators will receive technical assistance and investment facilitation. The 13 awardees are:
- Agros Pte Ltd. (Cambodia) – provides farmers with different low-carbon technologies that are bundled with affordable finance, insurance, advisory services, and market access.
- Centre for Aquatic Livelihood Jaljeevika (India) – provides an IoT sensor-based advisory support system for small-scale fish farmers, allowing them to adjust farming practices, enhance production, and reduce production costs.
- Covestro Inclusive Business ASEAN (Thailand) – tackles the challenges of post-harvest loss in underserved communities with the Solar Dryer Dome technology, enabling farmers to increase their production and minimize food waste.
- Egreen Technology Joint Stock Company (Vietnam) – supplies efficient biogas digesters and purifiers that allows farmers to generate electricity from agricultural waste.
- Entrepreneurs Du Monde Pteah Baitong Co LTD (Cambodia) – offers solar powered irrigation systems (SPIS) and additional financing support – including a PAYGO model for smallholder farmers.
- Komodo Water/PT. Tinamitra Mandiri (Indonesia) – provides sustainable water management solutions for small islands and coastal communities, including solar-powered ice production systems to support the fisheries sector.
- Mandala Agrifresh Pvt. Ltd. (Nepal) – helps farmers manage post-harvest food waste through a solar-powered cold storage unit.
- MyVAS4Agri – Village Link (Myanmar) – provides farmers with the Htwet Toe mobile application that gives location-specific and timely recommendations that reduces water usage on their farms.
- New Leaf Dynamic Technologies Pvt. Ltd (India) – provides farmer cooperatives with biomass-powered cold storage units.
- RecyGlo Company Pte Ltd (Thailand) – runs an organic waste recycling operation to produce and sell organic fertilizers to farmers and data-driven IoT solutions for advisory services.
- S4S Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (India) – procures farmers’ produce, engages women micro-entrepreneurs for solar-powered drying, and then sells the produce to the hospitality industry and food companies in India and abroad.
- Techno-Hill Engineering Co., Ltd (Myanmar) – provides solar-powered dryers, cold storage, and pumps to farmers to reduce post-harvest food waste.
- Yayasan Rumah Energi (YRE) (Indonesia) – facilitates small and mid-size enterprises and microfinance organizations to install biodigesters for small livestock farmers.
The Call for Innovations is an activity under Water and Energy for Food: A Grand Challenge for Development (WE4F). WE4F is an international partnership amongst the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European Union, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of the Netherlands, Sweden through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. WE4F aims to increase food production, impact gender and poverty, and promote biodiversity, climate, and environmental resilience by sustainably scaling solutions to meet the challenges in the water-energy-food nexus.
The WE4F South and Southeast Asia Regional Innovation Hub (a consortium of Tetra Tech, CrossBoundary, and Devworks International) supports the scaling-up of energy and/or water-efficient innovations in 16 countries, with a focus on women and BOP. Innovations include technologies, business and finance models, and new modes of cooperation.
To learn more, visit: https://we4f.org/asia and follow @WE4FGCD on Twitter.
