Helping young cleantech ideas become viable businesses
Climate change is rapidly affecting the world in many ways today. Against this backdrop Climate Launchpad, which is the world’s largest green business ideas competition, is striving to bring about a solution to the problem by helping aspiring entrepreneurs take their cleantech ideas and turn them into viable global businesses.
Praveeni
We spoke to Praveeni Senanayake, the National Lead for Climate Launchpad Sri Lanka, who gave us an insight into the competition and Sri Lanka’s stance in it.
Praveeni’s involvement with Climate Launchpad began with her participation in the last leg of Climate Launchpad Sri Lanka last year . This year Climate Launchpad invited her to organize the competition for Sri Lanka as the National Lead . And as the National Lead, she’s organizing it in Sri Lanka under her own startup Cambium, supported by the Climate Collective Foundation.
The programme in its entirety is part of the entrepreneurship offerings by EIT Climate-KIC, one of the Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) established in 2010 by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), which is the Europian Union body that creates sustainable economic growth in Europe. ClimateLaunchpad is part of the Entrepreneurship offerings of EIT Climate-KIC.
The competition has three stages: Round One sees selected applicants attend a two day intensive bootcamp. Round Two focuses on intensive coaching where applicants will attend six coaching sessions to perfect their pitch, value proposition and business model. This will be followed by the National Final where they’ll pitch in front of a National Jury, from which top three startups will be selected.
The top national winner will make it to Round 3, the Global Grand Final,which takes place in November this year. Here they will pitch their idea in front of leading investors and entrepreneurs and receive feedback and get a chance to discuss their idea in detail during network sessions.
The jury will select the top three startups and sixteen finalists to compete for the ultimate win: access to EIT Climate-KIC Accelerator and prize money.
Partcipants at a session Pix by Ashwin Dominique Jayalath
Currently, Praveeni reveals that the Sri Lankan applicants are being matched with mentors for one-to-one coaching sessions, with their next stage being the National Finals.
As Praveeni explains, the positive impact of a competition like Climate Launchpad comes from giving early stage startups the knowledge in establishing and growing their startup, while providing them the guidance to steer themselves along the right focus areas.
On the other hand, it gives up and coming innovators and entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka the opportunity to pitch their idea at a global level while gaining international exposure. It also enables the startups to find potential funding and investors as a side impact of taking part in the competition.
Most importantly, Praveeni adds that “taking part in a competition like Climate Launchpad enables clean tech heroes to drive positive and sustainable change in Sri Lanka.”
Climate Launchpad Sri Lanka will be held in collaboration with their Outreach Partner Environmental Foundation (Ltd) and their Venue Partner HomeTree Coworking.
Climate Launchpad Sri Lanka is also open for partnership opportunities for any entity that is willing to support Sri Lankan finalists with participating at the Global Grand Finals. For enquiries, contact them via praveeni.climate@gmail.com.