TRANSFORM, an impact accelerator that unites corporates, donors, investors and academics to support visionary enterprises, has announced a key milestone as research shows it has positively impacted over 10 million people across Africa and Asia, three million of which were in India.

Led by Unilever, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and EY, TRANSFORM advances the development of innovative business models through a combination of grant funding, business insight and research to help solve global challenges.

Accelerating the uptake of revolutionary business ideas across India

Since its launch in 2015, TRANSFORM has supported over 100 projects in 17 countries. In India, TRANSFORM is working with revolutionary businesses, including supporting:

* Saraplast to provide safe and hygienic public toilets to women and girls by converting old buses into beautiful, static public toilets, which helps address gender equality in India by supporting women’s health needs and social mobility.

* TrashCon to manage over 20 plants separating around 1,100 tonnes of waste daily through scaling up its technology to tackle waste in bigger cities and building a remote quality monitoring system.

* Spring Health to provide affordable, safe drinking water to underserved households using innovative purifying methods. During COVID, TRANSFORM further funded Spring Health to organise programmes in schools, which delivered disinfectant to 60,000 people every day and reached over 10,000 students.

Scaling new solutions to global challenges

TRANSFORM is now focused on accelerating its impact, with the ambitious goal of reaching an additional five million lives across the next two years. In addition to the support given to the existing projects by entrepreneurs and researchers, it has today announced support for fifteen new enterprises since January, with each receiving a tailor-made combination of funding and business support.

One of the new enterprises in India is Atypical Advantage, which places people with disabilities into corporate jobs and encourages corporations to shift their values to create more inclusive work environments.

Rebecca Marmot, Unilever’s Chief Sustainability Officer, said:

“We’re thrilled to have reached such an important milestone at TRANSFORM. Some of the best new ideas and groundbreaking solutions are coming from entrepreneurs and start-ups. By blending local innovation with the resources of large organisations, TRANSFORM is unlocking these opportunities, helping to scale workable solutions and drive progress. It’s also helping us to expand our own networks. We look forward to supporting more enterprises in the future and being part of this dynamic eco-system.”

Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Chief Scientific Adviser Professor Charlotte Watts, said:

“This is a major milestone for this innovative project, which is offering targeted support to ambitious entrepreneurs and innovators across sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. As this cutting-edge initiative enters the next phase, the UK will continue to work in partnership with business and civil society to tackle the world’s biggest social, environmental and economic challenges.”

Richard Taylor, EY’s UK&I Consumer Sector Leader, said:

“TRANSFORM further demonstrates our shared belief that impact entrepreneurs will be critical in driving progress towards the UN SDGs.

“We hope that more organisations will feel inspired to join the TRANSFORM initiative and help us transform more lives.”