Techtonic is not a jugglery of words; it’s a serious engagement with trailblazers working on out-of-the-box innovations rooted in deep science and technology that have a profound impact at the societal level. It calls for a tectonic shift in priorities to tackle the fault lines of health, education, agriculture and climate change.
Techtonic is a collaborative scouting platform that will search for mission driven entrepreneurs, start-ups and innovators that are solving some of humanity’s biggest challenges and provide support in their entire lab to market journey through Social Alpha Accelerator program.
India’s agriculture, which supports half the nation’s population, is grappling with several challenges. Despite being the second-largest producer of agricultural products, India’s agricultural sector contributes only 17-18% to the nation’s GDP. Traditional practices, inadequate technological infrastructure, lack of financial support, and fragmented landholdings limit productivity, while dependence on unpredictable monsoons leaves farmers vulnerable. Recognising these issues, Techtonic: Innovations for Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods, designed in collaboration with NITI Aayog and PUSA, aims to identify and support groundbreaking technologies that address a curated set of challenges faced by smallholder farmers and enhance productivity, sustainability, and resilience in the agricultural sector.
Increased urbanisation is linked to rising emissions. As per an estimate, cities and towns in India contribute two-thirds more emissions per person than in rural India. Since cities will increasingly play a role in India’s growth and development story, they will also be critical in helping India achieve net-zero emissions by 2070. Innovations in Sustainable Urban Transition, a joint initiative between Social Alpha and the U of T India Foundation in association with select urban local bodies, proposes to support innovators and entrepreneurs developing technology-led solutions to build climate resilience within urban geographies in India.
Waste pickers in India play a multifaceted role in climate action, contributing to waste reduction, resource recovery, GHG emission reduction, circular economy promotion, community engagement, and inclusive urban development. While they play a critical role in society, they face a myriad of challenges, including social stigma, absence of legal recognition, and limited access to health, safety, and social security benefits. Techtonic: Innovations for a Circular Economy is looking for Innovators and entrepreneurs working to accelerate innovative circular economy solutions in India while providing alternate employment opportunities to individuals from waste picker families.
Pfizer INDovation: NIPER-A Edition, with Social Alpha, Pfizer and NIPER Ahmedabad as anchor partners is designed to support start-ups building high-quality affordable diagnostics. NIPER Ahmedabad will offer their lab infrastructure and technical expertise for product development. Social Alpha as the anchor partner for INDovation, will curate the innovations and support venture development for the selected cohort.
Over 200 million individuals from India’s marginalised communities depend on internal migration as a means of their livelihood. Given the growing impact of climate change and climate action on rural livelihoods, migration will continue to increase as a livelihood strategy. Social Alpha has launched Techtonic – Innovations for Future Ready Migrant Workforce in partnership with the Migrants Resilience Collaborative. The objective of this program is to create a stack of innovative and viable solutions that collectively catalyse upward mobility for migrant workers, contributing to a more sustainable, inclusive and equitable future.
India grapples with a colossal waste management challenge, exacerbated by rapid urbanisation, growing population, and increasing consumption patterns. Each day, the country generates approximately 160,000 tons of solid waste per day, a figure that will grow more dismal. The existing infrastructure is inadequate and calls for a systemic approach to address insufficient segregation at source, poor collection systems, outdated technologies, and an unregulated informal sector.
India’s rural agricultural landscape is home to legacy Agri institutions, a large civil society and a farm-supportive government. Moreover, the historical policy push to adopt scientific and technological innovations from the world is now being complimented by a new generation of Agri innovators and entrepreneurs who are building indigenous innovations suited for Indian farms. However, despite these trends and chronology, more than 125 million small and marginal farms, impacting the lives of more than half a billion people living on these farms, continue to face extreme financial, technological and climate-induced challenges.
The Pfizer INDovation Program brings together various stakeholders including Social Alpha, the Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog, Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT), IIT-Delhi, Agnii, amongst others on the same platform to unlock greater reach of care, and effectiveness in our healthcare system. The initiative aims to guide high-quality start-ups and accelerate their journey through product engineering and development services, clinical validation support, regulatory advisory, and market access opportunities through grant support and catalytic cross-industrial collaborations.
Techtonic- Innovations in AgriTech
India has 157.35 million hectares of land under cultivation yet faces many challenges. 60% of agricultural land is at risk of soil degradation because of poor cropping pattern, $13 Billion was the economic cost for post-harvest loss in 2016 only and 35% of arable land was under irrigation in 2010. Despite myriad of challenges, the agri-food system is undergoing some transformation, but the speed of this change is much slower than what is required for achieving the SDGs, especially those related to land, water, environment, and climate change. Major changes will be witnessed in both growth rate as well as the composition of food demand in the coming years. Considering the unprecedent challenges that agriculture is facing and the opportunities that exist, there is a need for transformative innovations in Agri and allied sector.
Techtonic - Innovations Towards Zero Food Waste
Techtonic Innovations Towards Zero Food Waste is a joint initiative by DBS Bank and Social Alpha. The program aims to support innovative technologies and solutions reducing quantitative and qualitative food loss and waste across food systems and the agri-food value chain.
Techtonic - Innovations in Sustainable construction
In India, the Construction Sector is responsible for 40% of the total energy consumption, rising at a rate of 8% annually. Waste Generation remains another issue wherein construction accounts for 25% of total waste generated annually. The dust from construction sites contributes 30% to the growing air pollution today.
Techtonic - Innovations in Clean Energy
Social Alpha Energy Challenge is back with its third edition as ‘Techtonic – Innovations in Clean Energy’. While the challenge invites renewable energy, energy efficiency and clean energy access solutions from all stages of the energy lifecycle, and across all use cases, there is a special focus on four themes this year – Energy for Livelihoods, Smart Energy Systems, Energy Storage and Thermal Comfort. We are looking for innovators and entrepreneurs with transformative technologies that have the potential to bring about deep and irreversible social and environmental impact.
A first-of-its-kind nationwide scouting program for innovators and entrepreneurs who are working to solve complex problems of urbanization through deep-science & tech innovation. The goal of the Quest is to identify innovative enterprises that are looking to deploy their solutions across six high priority areas viz. waste, water and sanitation, environment and pollution, traffic and mobility, sustainable habitat and municipal systems.
The Social Alpha Entrepreneurs for Impact (E4i) program is a year-long immersive program that equips passionate ‘entrepreneurs-in-the-making’ with end-to-end capacity building and training to leverage India’s deep science, innovation and entrepreneurship environment. It is anchored in grassroots problem solving, immersive development sector experience, technology scouting, business planning and venture building. The program is designed to bring together entrepreneurs and innovators, and foster collaboration amongst some of the top educational, technical and philanthropic institutions in the world.
The Social Alpha Quest for Healthcare aims to foster innovation and entrepreneurship to solve key healthcare challenges, eliminate disparities and achieve health equity in India. The program primarily focuses on adoption and scaling of innovative products in order to accelerate development, positively impact public health outcomes and achieve global product standards. This will be achieved through funding to conduct clinical validation studies along with intensive mentoring support in business models, regulation, global technologies and market dynamics. The selected startups will be supported by Tata Trusts-PATH Impact Lab and their network of mentors for a period of up to 15 months.
The Social Alpha Energy Challenge aims to discover next-gen technology innovations that promise to unlock new solutions to India’s energy challenges or make existing energy networks smarter, cleaner and more affordable. In this ambitious hunt, the Challenge is inviting entries from innovators across various stages of the energy lifecycle — generation, transmission and distribution, storage, and consumption, in multiple sectors such as households, farm, industry, infrastructure, building, utility and transport.