Pollinate Group
Pollinate Group
Employing low-income locals to sell affordable, sustainable household products, changing the everyday lives of disadvantaged urban and rural communities.
BCTA MEMBERSHIP STATUS
Active
SECTOR
Energy & Utilities
HEADQUARTERS
India
REGION OF INITIATIVE
Asia & Pacific
SDG CONTRIBUTION
RELATED NEWS
The Impact Goal
Pollinate Group first joined Business Call to Action in September 2018 and renewed its membership in 2021. Over the next five years, Pollinate Group plans to transition its successful and proven women entrepreneurship model to scale using partnerships and digital innovations in order to empower 10,000 women from vulnerable backgrounds to distribute affordable and life-improving clean energy and household products to 10 million people across India and Nepal.
The Market Gap
Globally, 689 million people live in extreme poverty (<$1.90/day), with 180 million of these individuals living in India and Nepal. In India, there are 65 million people living in informal urban settlement communities, with this number projected to grow to 160 million by 2025. They live in basic tent shelters, without access to electricity, clean water, or good communication. Women in these communities disproportionately bear the brunt of poverty as discriminatory norms in society deny them opportunities to undertake higher education or dignified employment. Additionally, despite almost 98% of people in India and Nepal having access to electricity, 74% of people in informal communities rely on hazardous and expensive sources of fuel and lighting such as kerosene and biomass.
Although many efforts have taken place in India and Nepal to economically empower women living in poverty, these interventions have often been limited to one-off training interventions, which do not have a long-term impact and have focused on women who have access to credit. Informal settlement communities in India and rural communities in Nepal have also been overlooked by most development actors. Recognizing these gaps, Pollinate Group is committed to empowering women regardless of their literacy and education levels, to lead their communities out of extreme poverty.
The Business Solution
Pollinate Group works to alleviate poverty in India and Nepal by empowering women as leaders of change to distribute products that improve the livelihoods of communities living on less than $1.90 a day. It does this by providing women from marginalized communities with the tailored skills, support and opportunities they need over an 18 to 24 month period, to become successful entrepreneurs. To date, Pollinate Group has empowered over 900 women to become entrepreneurs, distributing affordable clean energy and household products to over 700,000 people living in extreme poverty. Almost 90% of Pollinate’s entrepreneurs have reported increased incomes, confidence and agency, with the majority investing their savings into improving the living conditions of their families or investing in their children’ s education. Many of the entrepreneurs have also gone on to set up their own businesses, enter local politics, or take on active leadership roles in their communities.
Over the next five years, Pollinate Group plans to transition its successful and proven women entrepreneurship model to scale using partnerships and digital innovations in order to empower 10,000 women from vulnerable backgrounds to distribute affordable and life-improving clean energy and household products to 10 million people across India and Nepal.
About Pollinate Group
Pollinate Group is an impact-centric social global enterprise established in 2012 with the vision of creating a world where women are equipped to lead their communities out of poverty. It empowers women to be change agents and provide them with the skills and support they need to distribute clean energy products that save time, money and improve the living conditions of India and Nepal's most underserved communities living on US$1.90 to $3.20 a day.
By empowering women over the long term with the skills and support they need to become entrepreneurs, women establish trusting, long term service relationships with their communities. They are committed to working in collaboration with communities to provide them with products and customer service tailored to their needs, and which empower families to break intergenerational cycles of poverty. So far, its entrepreneurs have sold over 200,000 life-changing clean energy products which have impacted 700,000 customers, enabling them to save more than US$23M and offset over 1.5 million tons of CO2e emissions. Learn more from here