The Sustainable Housing Challenge 2023 is an incubation call for startups working on affordable and sustainable housing in India. Villgro runs it and Habitat for Humanity International’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter backs it.
Applicants apply as a company, not as individuals, and keep running their own venture. Selected startups receive money, tailored incubation and introductions to customers, partners and investors.
The call sits inside ShelterTech, the Terwilliger Center’s platform for affordable housing innovation, which runs national programs in India, Mexico and Kenya plus regional ones. Villgro is the Indian delivery partner and takes applications through its own ShelterTech portal.
Benefits & funding
- Financial support of up to US$20,000 per selected startup.
- Tailored incubation to refine the business model and build a scaling strategy.
- Market access: introductions to potential customers, partners and investors, and a place on a global showcase platform.
- Entry to a community of housing, construction and investment stakeholders.
- Villgro incubatees work to a 100-day plan with monthly targets, weekly calls and field visits, and get subsidised mentoring and specialist technical services.
- An earlier ShelterTech India round funded green product certification, including life cycle analysis and environmental product declarations, plus ground operations and pilot demonstrations.
Eligibility
- The applicant is a startup registered in India. Individuals cannot apply.
- Early-stage ventures building new solutions in the sustainable housing space.
- Pilot-stage ventures ready to enter the market, with clear scalability and impact potential.
- The work must sit in one of three focus areas: sheltertech, affordable housing, or green building materials.
- ShelterTech’s catalytic funding rules ask for at least one fully developed product or prototype, a focus on the affordable segment, and registration as a for-profit company.
- No nationality, residency, age, degree or work-experience requirement is published.
Can you apply?
Open to all applicants
No nationality, residency, education, or experience limits are listed.
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Application process
- 1Read the program page on Villgro’s site and check your venture against the three focus areas.
- 2Open the ShelterTech application portal through the Apply Now button.
- 3Register an account, then state whether the enterprise is for-profit or non-profit — for-profit applicants must be registered, or planning to register, as a Private Limited company.
- 4Pick the sector and sub-sector, then complete the application form for the enterprise.
- 5Villgro assesses submissions, runs a diagnostic panel with industry experts, and signs an incubation agreement with growth milestones with the ventures it selects.
Program timeline
Round 1 application deadline — the only deadline the organisers have published.
Nov 3, 2023
Villgro lists the challenge among its current programs and keeps the ShelterTech application portal open. No further round dates are published.
2023 to present