2021 GSMA Innovation Fund for Digital Urban Services

Application Deadline: July 2nd 2021

The GSMA is looking for start-ups, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and social enterprises in Africa, South or South East Asia. These organisations should be leveraging digital technology to deliver urban services with socio-economic, commercial and environmental impact in the following sectors:

• Plastic and Waste Management;
• Water;
• Energy; and
• Sanitation.

Successful projects for The GSMA Innovation Fund for Digital Urban Services will receive an equity-free grant of between £100,000 and £250,000 to scale their innovation over a 15- to 18-month period. 

Requirements

To be eligible to apply, applicants must meet the following criteria:
• Have active users and commercial revenue (revenue generated from any products or services offered by the organisation) in at least one eligible low- or middle-income market
• Commit to providing 25% to 50% matching funding depending on the total grant amount requested
• Ensure the proposed grant project is implemented in an urban area as defined by the World Bank.
• Be an entity registered and operating in the country of project implementation (whether domestic or foreign-owned or a joint venture). In cases where responsibility for service delivery lies with a downstream partner, rather than the applicant, for example, service delivery by a local government, it may be acceptable for the applicant to be registered in a country other than that of project implementation (see geographic-specific restrictions in section 3).
• Be fully compliant with relevant business licensing, taxation, employee, and other regulations in all applicable countries of grant project operation.
• Be registered and have a bank account in the country where they will receive the grant
money (if not the same as the project implementation country).
• To be eligible, applicants must be an eligible entity (as set out in section 1) and will need to demonstrate that a majority of their income is derived from commercial activities. Early stage companies who have not reached this threshold will need to
demonstrate a reliable path to sustainability via commercial activities that generate revenue to be considered.
• Only one organization can apply for funding and become a grantee. An applicant can have downstream partners who have a role in the project as per the GSMA’s Downstream Partner Guidelines. In case government entities are grant project partners, they cannot be a sub-recipient of the grant.

The Fund is open to applicants whose projects are implemented in countries that are eligible
to receive official development assistance (see OECD DAC) in the following regions:
• Africa;
• South or South East Asia.

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the 2021 GSMA Innovation Fund for Digital Urban Service