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SELCO Foundation




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A group of woman stand next to a solar panel.

(Pictured above: SELCO builds awareness among community members and individuals on impact, use, and maintenance of technologies, like solar panels.)

The SELCO Foundation is a nonprofit headquartered in India that develops and deploys clean energy solutions to improve livelihoods and increase access to healthcare and education in under-resourced communities.

SELCO follows an ecosystem approach, which aims at catalyzing both demand and supply by innovating on technology, financial, and ownership models. SELCO does that by following a bottom-up approach, building capacities among communities and relevant stakeholders, creating enabling conditions and influencing policy which allows for inclusive innovations to thrive. SELCO uses soft funding and flexible capital to develop these models in the field of energy and sustainability, and its incubation program fosters local entrepreneurs in developing enterprises that deliver sustainable energy-driven solutions. This holistic approach looks at the enterprise ecosystem as a whole and develops crucial opportunities for social entrepreneurship.

For several years, SELCO has been a critical thought partner for The Lemelson Foundation in how to develop inclusive regional innovation ecosystems. The Foundation supported SELCO’s establishment of a model that applies a climate lens to poverty alleviation, and that promotes greater inclusivity in the transition to clean energy and within the Indian innovation ecosystem as a whole.

SELCO has spent a decade refining a replicable approach to strengthening enabling ecosystems for local ownership, development, adoption, and maintenance of sustainable energy innovations. They collaborate with local actors to address key ecosystem aspects like the supply chain of efficient technologies, affordable end-user financing, and local entrepreneur and enterprise development.

Uniquely, SELCO has access to three levels of stakeholders: Communities vulnerable to and impacted by climate change, ecosystem stakeholders serving and innovating on solutions for those impacts, and global stakeholders whose policies, commitments, and services impact the working model of ecosystem stakeholders.

SELCO has expanded their work from addressing energy poverty in India to supporting the creation of  climate smart solutions that address poverty as a whole. Their work shows that climate action and economic justice can be part of an integrated economic development strategy, and can directly reach the communities that are most affected by climate change, but are often excluded from the benefits of the clean energy transition. 

A paddy farmer smiles while working in a green field.
Jayashree, is an entrepreneur who uses a wheelchair, is shown making bread.

Left: SELCO Foundation has a portfolio focusing on hardware technologies for easing on-farm effort through mechanization.
Right: Jayashree, an entrepreneur based out of a southern state in Karnataka. Her partnership with the SELCO Foundation helped her invest in the pictured machine and start her own bread making unit.

Learn more about the latest news and developments from the SELCO Foundation: