As we close the chapter on 2024, I find myself reflecting on a year of meaningful progress, learnings, and milestones at Social Alpha. In 2024, we set our sights high with ambitious targets for 2026: to build a portfolio of solutions with the potential to avoid over 1.3Gt of CO₂e annually by 2030; to deploy innovations to positively impact at least 10 million people; to achieve a three-fold increase in income for our target communities; and to build a portfolio of at least 30 clinically validated and deployment-ready healthcare solutions.
While the road ahead is long, the strides we’ve made so far are encouraging: our portfolio companies already display a combined potential to avoid up to 500 megatons of CO₂e per year by 2030; our innovation deployments have touched over 2 million lives; smallholder farmer incomes have risen by up to 80%; and we have supported over 20 healthcare innovations as they transitioned from lab to market.
Our commitment to supporting cutting-edge technologies at Social Alpha Labs also yielded impressive results. By offering start-ups a critical advantage through access to pre-compliance services, our Labs helped 20 innovators bridge the critical lab-to-market gap.
Yet, the gap between the R&D ecosystem and the communities it aims to serve remains unjustifiably wide. To bridge this divide, we are launching two new initiatives. The first is Alpha Helix, a venture studio that focuses on harnessing the power of new frontier technologies such as genome editing, molecular diagnostics and synthetic biology for societal applications which range from bridging the gap of missed or delayed diagnoses to developing new climate-resilient crops.
The second is Living Labs, a platform to demonstrate and implement transformative innovations directly with end users and communities. Our first Living Lab, set to be commissioned next year in Uttar Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region, will aim to demonstrate agritech solutions in real-world settings, bringing research closer to the communities it seeks to empower.
On the ventures front, 2024 saw us evaluating over 2,500 start-ups and supporting over 90 innovations across various themes. These numbers reflect the growing pipeline of impactful innovations, and in 2025, we aim to amplify this effort exponentially.
But our real pride lies in translating these ideas and innovations into action on the ground. Through Sustain Plus and a large partner ecosystem, we’ve impacted over two million people across more than 300 districts in India with over 170 deployed projects prioritising energy access, productive use of renewable energy, and improved rural livelihoods.
We’ve also been testing out deployments of healthcare solutions, and these trials have set the stage for a fully integrated program that we intend to launch later this year, which will aim to deploy several groundbreaking health innovations to those who need them most – so keep a look out for the announcement coming soon!
As I look back on 2024, I am both humbled and exhilarated by the growth of our full-stack innovation architecture. None of this would have been possible without YOUR belief in Social Alpha’s mission, and the tireless dedication of our team.
And as we step into 2025, we must also take a moment to recommit to the three pillars of our mission:
I wish you a fantastic start to the new year, and I look forward to advancing this mission together!
With gratitude,
Manoj