CGEF Boost for Women-Led Climate Innovation in India, LatAM
Women-led climate innovation and entrepreneurship in India and across Latin America and the Caribbean will get a boost from the Climate Gender Equity Fund (CGEF), which last Thursday announced its latest grant awards to Achieving Women’s Equity (AWE) Funds focused in India and Deetken Impact’s Ilu Women’s Empowerment Fund supporting solutions in Latin America and the Caribbean.
CGEF, with support from Amazon, Reckitt, Skoll Foundation, The UPS Foundation, and Visa Foundation, seeks to increase access to climate finance for women-led and women-benefiting organisations. Grantmaking under CGEF is managed by 2X Global.
The latest grant awards were announced during ‘Leading the Change: Mobilizing Women-Led Climate Action’, on Thursday, November 21 at COP 29, the United Nations’ climate change conference which took place in Baku, Azerbaijan.
L-R — Seema Chaturvedi, founder of AWE Funds, Alexa Blain, co-founder and Managing Partner of Deetken Impact and Magali Lamyin, Managing Partner of Deetken Impact.
Led by Alexa Blain and Magali Lamyin, Deetken Impact’s managed funds invest throughout Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).
Deetken was awarded the grant for the Ilu Women’s Empowerment Fund (Ilu Fund), a women-led fund jointly launched with Pro Mujer. The Ilu Fund is the first investment fund dedicated to advancing gender equality and empowering women across Latin America and the Caribbean. It fuels initiatives that create new opportunities for underserved women, helping them thrive and drive change in their communities.
The support from CGEF will be leveraged by the Ilu Fund to unlock millions more in private sector capital for investment in women-led or women-benefiting companies across LAC working on sustainable and resilient housing, green and inclusive finance or climate-smart agriculture. Part of the funding will also support technical assistance to build capacity for climate adaptation and gender-smart solutions.
Founded by Seema Chaturvedi, AWE (Achieving Women Equity) Funds is a women-led early growth venture equity fund investing in India-based future market leaders leveraging tech-led innovation to catalyse climate action and gender equity.
AWE aims to leverage the CGEF grant to grow and scale their fund, enable their portfolio companies to achieve measurable climate and gender impact, and strengthen the local ecosystem of vibrant climate and gender smart companies. They will do this by investing in and providing technical assistance to 6 to 8 women-led and women-benefiting climate companies, strengthening the capacity of local accelerator programs through targeted support, and conducting a fellowship program for young women climate professionals.
The awards join three other grant recipients from CGEF’s second funding round: Altree Capital which operates in Sub-Saharan Africa, Villgro Philippines, and The Rallying Cry, which operates in Eastern and Southern Africa. This brings the total awarded thus far under CGEF to over USD $4.5 million across the first two funding rounds.
