Wildlife Tech Incubator Program by CWS India: Innovating for India's Unique Biodiversity
India’s Biodiversity and Conservation Challenges
India is home to an incredibly diverse range of ecosystems, from the dense forests of the Western Ghats to the deserts of Thar and the high-altitude regions of Ladakh. However, this unique biodiversity also faces complex conservation challenges. One of the major issues is the limited availability of technology-driven solutions specifically tailored to address India’s distinct environmental and socio-economic contexts.
While technology has been leveraged for wildlife conservation, many of the solutions have been imported and aren’t designed with India’s Wildlife Protected Areas in mind. This gap in context-specific innovation has long hampered efforts to effectively address problems like poaching, human-wildlife conflict, habitat fragmentation, and forest fires.
What is the Wildlife Tech Incubator Program?
The Wildlife Tech Incubator aims to drive innovation in wildlife conservation by developing India-specific technologies. The program focuses on three key areas:
- Innovation for Indian Ecosystems: Encouraging the development of technological solutions that are adapted to the country’s diverse habitats.
- Platform for Innovation and Scale: Providing a space for the creation, testing, and scaling of conservation technologies.
- Building Infrastructure for Homegrown Solutions: Supporting the necessary infrastructure to foster and amplify locally-developed innovations.
This program will provide small grants to NGOs working on innovative technologies that address current wildlife conservation challenges. Technologies may include IoT, AI, Open Data, Satellite Imaging, GIS, and Remote Sensing.
Why is the Program Important?
India’s wildlife conservation landscape faces two critical issues:
- Lack of India-specific Technology: The country’s biodiversity requires specialized technologies tailored to its unique conservation needs, ranging from wildlife poaching prevention to addressing human-wildlife conflict and mitigating forest fires.
- Limited Scalability of Solutions: Many promising pilot projects and innovations struggle to scale, preventing them from making a significant impact. The Wildlife Incubator Tech program addresses this gap by supporting scalable solutions.
Grant Award Details
The top five submissions will receive a grant award of ₹20,00,000 each for the year 2024-25. Additionally, each project will be allocated ₹4,00,000 for equipment purchases.
Eligibility Criteria
- Must be a registered non-profit organization in India with 12A and 80G registrations.
- The project should not be an academic or individual research project.
- Focus areas include:
- Human-wildlife interactions
- Wildlife trade and illegal hunting
- Land use change and mapping
- Conservation of endangered species
- The solution should be in at least a prototype stage and scalable for broader adoption.
- The solution should contribute to public good by being accessible for use by other organizations.
Note: Incomplete applications after the deadline will not be eligible for consideration.
For any questions about the program, please write to wildincubator@cwsindia.org. View all details of the grant here.
