Both re-wilding as well as the creation of a green economy need a deep understanding of ground realities and committed local changemakers to engage with local stakeholders. We forge partnerships and provide direct funding and support to organisations working at different areas of an entire spectrum. If you are an organisation working in this space and would like to partner with us, please write to us at [email protected].
Investments
2022
IndianYards
A social enterprise up-skilling women from rural & indigenous communities of The Nilgiris into fine first generation artisans and subsequently enabling them into producer clusters.
2022
PadCare Labs
Helping manage the menstrual waste disposal system with a larger vision of safeguarding our women, our waste pickers and Mother Earth.
2022
Dharaksha
Specialising in biodegradable packaging material - aiming to curb stubble burning and plastic pollution by creating alternatives.
2022
InfinityBox
Replacing single-use plastic containers with reusable, recyclable, and better quality containers.
2022
Accasia
Carbon accounting and ESG tracking for real estate and hospitality sector.
2022
Climes
Climes make carbon neutralisation available to consumers through integrations across various services like flights, deliveries and events.
2022
MatchLog
MatchLog offers, at scale, the ability to street turn a container from the hinterland, leading to the elimination of unnecessary empty runs that are mandatory to either commence or complete an import-export cycle from the empty container parks.
2022
Solar Square
SolarSquare is an upcoming residential solar company. They aim to make the process of going solar frictionless and transparent for every homeowner.
2021
SundayGrids
SundayGrids is democratizing solar energy. They are essentially a marketplace to purchase remote solar energy and utilize it against utility bills.
2021
Akshayakalpa
Akshayakalpa is a farmer-entrepreneurship initiative and focuses on making the farmers self-reliant by using technology and processes to produce safe and wholesome food for the customers using sustainable practices.
2021
Organic Mandya
Organic Mandya is working to mainstream organic farming practices. They work with farmers and help in the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices. They now have 7000+ Farmers in 300+ spread across 270 Villages working with them.
2021
Zerocircle
Zerocircle uses seaweed to create bio-alternatives to products that we use in our daily lives and enable organisations to create solutions that are perfectly circular, and leave nothing behind. And make a zero-waste lifestyle easy.
2021
Zodhya
Zodhya enables direct reduction of electricity consumption for HVAC systems by regulating the energy intake helping with a 15-20% reduction of electricity consumption.
2021
Agnikul
Agnikul is democratising access to space for the small satellite market. The team aims to contribute immensely to the prediction of weather patterns using small satellites.
2020
Terra.do
Terra.do is an online climate school that trains aspiring climate entrepreneurs with the worlds leading experts on climate science, policy, business and social justice.
2020
Blue Sky Analytics
Good, reliable data forms the basis for bringing attention to problems and is key in finding the solutions to them. Blue Sky crunches massive amounts of satellite and other data to provide high-quality, historical, real-time and predictive environmental intelligence.
Grants
2022
IndusTree
Industree Foundation works with creative producers, mostly women, from marginalised communities in India and other parts of the globe. The Foundation has supported the organisation to enable development of value chains (know-how and capacity to use natural material to developing market connects) for natural resources such as bamboo and natural fibres and engage with a few states to enable friendly policies around such livelihood options.
2022
Himalaya Unnati Mission
The Foundation is supporting a programme office for the Himalaya Unnati Mission (HUM), which is an initiative to preserve, protect and resurrect the biological, economic and cultural heritage of the Himalayan states in India.
2022
Civis
Civis makes it easy for the ordinary man to participate in the law-making and public consultation process. They do this by making proposed Bills and other pieces of legislation available on an online platform and making these easy-to-read, easy-to-understand and easy-to-give-feedback-on. The Rainmatter Foundation has supported Civis for a limited grant to create, publish and disseminate a primer i.e. a how-to guide, on environmental public consultation.
2022
India Development Review (IDR)
IDR bridges a critical information, knowledge and sense-making gap in the development sector, and so occupies a unique and niche position in the space. It counts among its readers sector professionals, funders, policy-makers, mainstream media and students. The Foundation decided to support IDR to adopt a climate lens to all its reporting, to build consensus on climate vocabulary among funders and host convenings of diverse stakeholders.
2022
Solid Waste Management Round Table (SWMRT)
SWMRT is a collective of solid-waste management (SWM) practitioners working since 2009 for adoption of sustainable waste management practices by citizens and municipalities, for improving public health, clean air and water, safe food, healthy soil and inclusive livelihoods. The Rainmatter Foundation has offered institutional support to SWMRT to build internal capacity and to help create similar organisations in other towns and cities for advocacy and training.
2022
Lipok
Lipok Social Foundation (LSF) works for improved and sustainable livelihoods of farmers in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra. With Rainmatter Foundation’s support, the organisation is piloting a project involving communities in five Gram Panchayats (village clusters) of Aurangabad district to identify and support potential enterprises emanating from their basket of needs; basked of needs is a loose framework to know and visibilise a cluster’s imports in an attempt to understand how many of these imports can be replaced by locally produced goods.
2022
T4G Labs
T4G Labs brings technological expertise and frugal tools to help the non-profit sector fill program-delivery gaps, be it for data gathering for projects or program monitoring and management. It is also building a cadre of fellows to multiply this approach. Rainmatter Foundation supports T4G Labs’ core mission and purpose in furthering this work.
2022
Hume Centre for Ecology and Wildlife Biology
The Hume Centre for Ecology and Wildlife Biology (Hume) has a unique approach towards making science accessible to local citizens primarily through their weather forecasting and school science program in Wayanad, Kerala. This is one of India’s aspirational districts. Rainmatter Foundation supported Hume to further this work and socialise this approach with other non-profits in the country.
2022
Aga Khan Rural Support Programme India (AKRSPI)
The notion of carbon markets as a way of green finance is rapidly gaining traction around the world. It hopes to ensure that the capital infusion through carbon markets helps smallholder farmers increase incomes while transitioning to more resilient ways of production. C-GEM is a new centre within the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme India (AKRSPI) which is working with different carbon funds and project developers to ensure that farmers have an equitable representation in designing the path forward for agriculture-based carbon and other payment-for-ecosystem services markets.
2022
Punarchith
Punarchith is located in Chamarajanagar, which is one of Karnataka’s most environmentally distressed districts. With Rainmatter Foundation’s support, Punarchith is continuing its restoration effort of a degraded plot of land in Nagavalli village. The place, called Angarike Maala, is a kind of a “living lab” for regenerative and traditional experiments be it for crop rotation, slash-and-burn, seed bank, bamboo construction and so on. The team is also engaging with the Solega community of BR Hills to document their language and traditional knowledge.
2022
RCRC
The RCRC network, along with the Ministry of Rural Development, is making a concerted effort for an integrated farming approach in multiple clusters across India. The Rainmatter Foundation feel this will be a valuable experiment at scale, and worth supporting. This effort can help farmers self-assess a bunch of parameters and perhaps better understand the trade-offs, without which it's unlikely that we can arrest ecological degradation or prevent nutritional challenges and curb asset and income losses.
2022
Saahas
Waste management at source is critical to prevent pollution and deterioration of soil and water. The Foundation has supported Saahas to initially handhold and transition eight gram panchayats in Karnataka into model gram panchayats where waste will be segregated at source and recovered at material recovery facilities (MRFs) for sustainable solid waste management practices. The program is to be scaled to 100 gram panchayats in the two districts of Yadgir and Kalburgi alongwith relevant training and workshops.
2022
PARI
Much of India is rural, and the rural seldom finds a place in mainstream media. PARI's coverage of rural India is an invaluable treasure. The Foundation's grant to PARI will enable the team to bolster their climate coverage of parts of India that are largely ignored by mainstream media.
2022
CSTEP
The Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP) is a team of systems thinkers that research connected problems from a science and evidence lens, and inform policy about the same. Their modelling tools and approaches effectively enable decision making. The Rainmatter Foundation is in sync with their new focus on intersectionality across sectors for better policy inputs to address climate-related issues.
2022
Tech4Good Community
The Tech4Good Community runs a maturity model based program for non-profit organisations to embrace technological tools. The Foundation's support to Tech4Good Community is to bring in this tech readiness to the organisations we work with as well as to the larger non-profit community.
2022
Veditum
Sand is among the most mined minerals on the planet. Rampant sand mining from riverbeds alters a river's ecology. While sand-mining is a regulated activity, on-ground, this is a thriving illegal trade. Illegal sand mining is an invisible problem since no data on sand-mining exists in India. The Foundation is supporting Veditum to build an open platform which will crowd-source information on sand-mining from primary sources in an attempt to quantify and visibilise this problem.
2022
Biome Environmental Trust
Rainmatter decided to support the Biome Trust chiefly to create an outreach and communications program to advocate the organisation's work in visibilising the problem of depleting groundwater and recharging aquifers, such as their Million Wells campaign for Bangalore.
2022
Wassan
WASSAN’s farmer network, especially for rainfed regions, is among the largest in the country. The Rainmatter Foundation’s support is to provide an ecosystem of support to make it easy for farmers to shift to regenerative practices as well as to arrive at an assessment methodology for place-based indicators, a seed exchange platform, a bio-resource centre (BRC) and work on a hub-and-spoke model for farm tools and millet machines.
2022
Buzz Women
The creation of agency and the desire to take charge of one's own future is a critical piece of the climate puzzle. Buzz Women has been creating changemakers in over 5,000 villages in rural Karnataka. By supporting Buzz Women, the Foundation hopes to increase the awareness of both the sense of the house as well as of solutions that can help these changemakers drive climate adaptation and mitigation efforts in their respective communities.
2022
SlamOutLoud
What is water? What is air? Are they connected? Are they important? How does one talk to kids about the elements, about nature? Slam Out Loud builds open source climate learning resources for children, and with Rainmatter Foundation's support, trains educators in engaging kids with the environment.
2021
Nrityagram
Rainmatter Foundation did a small grant for Nrityagram for their plan to demonstrate the baby steps that communities and campuses such as theirs can do to practically lower their water, food and energy footprints in their location. The intent is to show what a place of interest with high footfalls can do to spread awareness.
2021
Socratus
Can key influencers come together to look at certain problems from a longer term perspective? Can they work towards a shared vision and goals irrespective of their immediate, possibly divergent, needs? Socratus is the midwife of collective wisdom that attempts to solve wicked societal problems, and climate change is certainly one such wicked problem. The Rainmatter Foundation decided this is an important area for support.
2021
Janaagraha
What does Urban Ecology even mean today? Do our cities acknowledge the role of ecology in their functioning, or the responsibility they carry towards it? Do we account for water, soil and biodiversity that matter to our existence as we set goals for our cities? How do citizens get involved, participate in both taking on responsibility and asking for accountability around this? In light of the climate crisis, the Foundation decided to support Janaagraha to take on these questions for policy inputs and urban planning.
2021
Sauramandala Foundation
If we have to address the climate crisis, we need, at scale, changemaking through place-based fellowships that take on myriad local problems and start to address them in sync with local governments, entrepreneurs, self-help groups (SHGs) and CSO partners. Sauramandala's model to create this and help other organisations with the same, appealed to the Foundation to step in and support.
2021
Sarjapura Curries
Suresh is an artist who set-up the Sarjapura Curries farm as an art installation that acknowledges and works with nature, improves the land it exists on and helps spread the message about our food diversity (both farmed and wild) amid many stakeholders in the community. The Rainmatter Foundation’s support will help with this small but really important initiative to demonstrate and strengthen this critical message.
2021
Fields of View
Public policy is often thought of as complicated and complex. Fields of View uses games and simulations to make sense of policies and their impact both to policy makers and to the common person. Rainmatter has supported Fields of View to enable non-profits to make sense of systems thinking in the public sphere and enable changemakers to understand abstract ideas in actionable ways.
2021
Uttarayan
Ever heard of elephants raiding crops in farmlands? These kinds of human-animal interactions tend to be a costly affair for both creatures. Rainmatter Foundation funded Uttarayan Wildlife to rope in farming communities to together restore degraded elephant corridors in southwest Bengal. We hope this effort is beneficial not only for the farmers but also for the elephants.
2021
Technology for Wildlife Foundation
A small, focused team that brings technology to the conservation space, Technology for Wildlife Foundation has collaborated with numerous organisations and worked on many projects to enable a better understanding and tracking of the landscapes, do independent Environment Impact Assessments (EIAs), and more. The Foundation wanted to support this critical work and provided core organisational support.
2021
Dakshin Foundation
India’s long coastline tends to be a blindspot for policy and problem solving. Dakshin's Sea Change programme takes a holistic view of the coastline and assesses community needs from economic and ecological lens, and works with locals to meet the same. The Foundation is glad to support this focused approach and hopeful that these efforts will enable better resilience for a coastline that is under threat in so many ways.
2021
CSEI
A lot of scientific research and knowledge as well as practitioner-led solutions tend to not be publicly accessible. The Centre for Social and Environment Innovation has taken on the challenge of making such knowledge available and actionable at scale, and also take the idea of hypothesis-led scalable pilots to governments and civil society organisations. The Foundation realised that this is a major gap that needs to be filled and extended support.
2021
Media Grantees
Successful ideas need to inhabit the mainstream conscious if they are to gain widespread acceptance. To this end, we support journalism, storytelling and messaging for various stakeholders in the mainstream.
2021
Palar Guttahalli Eco-restoration Program
The Palar River catchment areas have become arid and deforested, and the support to the Rotary Club has been planned as a participatory effort with the local community for restoration of the degraded land and management of the commons.
2021
Waste Warriors
Waste Warriors is involved in waste management efforts in parts of the Himalayas, an extremely eco-sensitive zone. The pristine environment is under pressure from increasing anthropogenic activities such as tourism. The Rainmatter Foundation is Waste Warriors for their waste management initiatives, awareness building and inputs for local waste management policies.
2021
Farmers for Forests
Preserving old-growth and native trees is one of the best ways to build-in environment resilience. Can private land-owners and farmers be persuaded not to chop trees on their lands for money or for firewood, and instead nurture them if they were paid to do so? Farmers For Forests is pioneering the payments-for-ecosystem-services concept in India, and the Foundation's support is enabling them to try this with land-owners in Gadchiroli and Ratnagiri in Maharashtra.
2021
SayTrees
SayTrees has a solid record for not only planting trees, but also getting various stakeholders involved in this. The Rainmatter Foundation’s support will enable the team to scale their efforts into agroforestry and landscape restoration at landscape- and collectivised-farm levels. This is a large push towards what is a major answer for both climate adaptation as well as mitigation.
2021
ReapBenefit
Reap Benefit is engaged in local problem solving for civic issues through its Solve Ninja program, which enables young people with tools, knowledge and networks. Rainmatter's funding was to enable a climate lens to this problem solving approach, creating playbooks and expanding their work to newer parts of the country through collaborations and partnerships.
2021
Nature Conservation Foundation
The Nature Conservation Foundation has among the best known conservation and restoration researchers and practitioners. They are engaged in multiple distinct landscapes across India where the teams build evidence, practice with the community and also help citizens connect deeper with local biodiversity. NCF trains many to become naturalists and also anchors a community of restoration specialists. The Rainmatter Foundation decided to do core organisational support for three years, and also explore how their work could better inform mainstream restoration efforts in both wild and community-owned spaces.
2021
Vidhi - Center for Legal Policy
The law is where a lot of the detail lies. Whether for conservation or protection of our commons, it is important to understand how the laws around them are strengthened or weakened over time, and work to improve them. Vidhi Legal works in this space, both with the government and also in the larger interest of the common good, commenting and highlighting gaps and needs. During the course of Rainmatter Foundation’s journey, we realised this is an important area to support. We have also run a few sessions to help improve awareness around the policy and legal aspects of these issues.
2020
Ecologically Sustainable Median Planting @ Center for Environment Concerns
Dr. K S Gopal is a pioneer who is driving an experiment for the ecologically sound planting of flora on a couple of kilometers of medians on main roads in Bengaluru. The aim is to support an ecosystem for birds and bees, use 50% less water, drastically bring down truck and road closure time, reduce costs for de-weeding, create biologically-rich healthy soils.
2020
Wild Shaale @ Centre for Wildlife Studies
The Centre for Wildlife Studies has a long history of working in the buffer zones of some of the major forests across peninsular India, and innovating to help reduce the fallout of human-wildlife interactions in these zones, improve education and attitudes around the forest and wildlife, and research on and bring to the fore the connection between the pressure on the wild and zoonotic diseases. We decided to support CWS through a flexible, core grant.
2020
The 1000 Tree Project @ SwaYYam
A 100+ acre farmers’ collective at the edge of the Bandipur forest aims to transform a degraded landscape into a fertile terrain with sustainable water resource management. In addition, the initiative will strengthen and secure the livelihoods of farmers through an agroforestry approach.
Fellowships
2022
P Srinivas / Soil Vaasu
This is a fellowship for Soil Vasu to evolve a methodology by which farmers can test their own soil as well as develop a cadre of soil enthusiasts and volunteers who can be trained as resource persons for soil health at the village level. In the first phase, he will be working with 12 gram panchayats in six districts in Karnataka after which the intent is to evolve a larger program with Rainmatter’s partner organisations to see if there can be 1000 Soil Vasus in different regions.
2020
DP Srivastava
There are tigers in Bhopal's periphery! And not just the first generation ones. DP Srivastava is researching this and helping build evidence around their coexistence in peri-urban landscapes. We thought this was important to add to the attitudes of humans for our ability to once again acknowledge and coexist with the wild.