FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: UNDP and Impact Hub Announce 10 Entrepreneurs Dedicated to the Sustainable Development Goals as Finalists of International Scaling Programme

Geneva, Switzerland | 26 September 2019

CONTACT:

Annie Freyschlag, Accelerate2030
Annie.Freyschlag@impactHub.ch
+1 970 987 3055

Together, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Impact Hub are pleased to announce the 10 international finalists for the Accelerate2030 programme. Accelerate2030 is an international programme that supports high-impact ventures tackling the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Since 2016, the Accelerate2030 programme has been implemented across 24 countries, covering 16 developing countries in this year’s edition. 

Selected from over 1,100 applications, this year represents a diverse cohort of impact-driven ventures covering numerous SDGs including innovative solutions for rapid and inexpensive disease diagnostics, bioplastic from olive seeds, and using artificial intelligence in agriculture, to name only a few.

“This year’s cohort of Accelerate2030 ventures are developing innovative solutions to important Sustainable Development Goals. It is innovators like these entrepreneurs who set the pace for addressing the world’s most pressing challenges related to the environment, food security, clean water, and many other important challenges manifested by the SDGs,” describes Artak Melkonyan, Chief Operating Officer of United Nations Development Programme SDG Innovative Finance.

These ten finalists will join the global Accelerate2030 scaling programme, kicked off by an intensive week of activities in Geneva from 4-11 of October, benefitting from a set of services and support offered by UNDP, Impact Hub, International Trade Centre, Pfizer, Amazon Web Services, UNAIDS, Boston Consulting Group and other program partners. The Geneva Week is part of the Geneva Building Bridges Week where key players working in the field of sustainable finance will connect with social entrepreneurs presenting at the SDG Geneva Finance Summit (SGS Geneva) October 9th.  On October 10th at the Factory17 event, theAccelerate2030 entrepreneurs along with other global visionaries, influencers, and disruptors will share their inspiring personal stories of how they undertook their Hero’s Journey towards creating a new, sustainable future.

The 10 International Accelerate2030 finalists are:

Unima (Mexico): Biotechnology company that develops rapid and inexpensive diagnostic and disease surveillance systems. The company’s goal is to solve the lack of access to rapid diagnostics for the 3 billion people in developing and resource-poor countries.

Portal Telemedicina (Brazil): Portal Telemedicina’s mission is to enable universal access to quality healthcare, through a platform that provides reliable, fast, and low-cost diagnostics to over 300 cities in Brazil and Africa by allowing doctors to diagnose online empowered by artificial intelligence (AI).

Bio Live (Turkey): Biolive produces 100% natural bioplastic granules made from olive seeds, in order to overcome environmental problems of plastic consumption, and to fulfil the deficiencies in bio/plastic market. 

AgroCognitive (Venezuela): An affordable and smart precision farming platform for every farm size and food industry. It is powered by an artificial intelligence (AI) visual recognition engine, analytics models, blockchain, and it is compatible with IoT management devices.

Ekofungi (Serbia): Ekofungi is a mid-sized organic mushroom producer using an innovative circular mushroom-production model that harnesses local cellulose-based wastes (in a 30 km radius), creating mushroom substrate and cultivation mushrooms using unique energy-efficient innovations. 

Impact Water (Nigeria): Delivering safe water to developing country institutions (schools and health facilities), via the sale, installation, and maintenance of water purification systems which use established technologies that perform effectively for decades with relatively simple, preventive maintenance. 

InvestEd (The Philippines): InvestEd enables institutions and individuals to invest in loans to unbanked college students through an innovative credit scoring tool that predicts repayment and employment.

Sampangan (Indonesia): An innovative waste processing solution using carbonisation technology (heat radiation) to efficiently decompose any kind of solid waste (organic & inorganic) into carbon for organic agriculture and other industries.

Costa Rica Insect Company (Costa Rica): Creating sustainable insect-based solutions, and providing high quality and healthy solutions for malnutrition. In addition CRIC seeks to use of insects to develop biochemical components for unsustainable industries such as plastics, pharmaceuticals, technology or even packaging.

SoluBio (Brazil):  SoluBio’s mission is to eliminate the usage of chemicals in agriculture through a technology that enables farmers to produce their own biofungicide, biopesticide and other necessary products in agriculture.

About Accelerate2030

Accelerate2030 is a program co-initiated by Impact Hub Geneva and the UNDP, with a mission to scale internationally the impact of entrepreneurs working towards achieving positive social and environmental change contributing to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The program builds a pioneering ecosystem for scaling the most innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing social and environmental problems.

Now in its third year, Accelerate2030 has reached over 1.5 million people in 24 countries. In 2019 Accelerate2030 is being implemented across 16 countries: Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Turkey, Armenia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia.

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For more information and interview requests, please contact:

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Geneva
Sarah Bel
Email: sarah.bel@undp.org

Media Inquiries

Please contact:

Annie Freyschlag
Communications and Programme Assistant
annie.freyschlag@impacthub.ch
Switzerland: +41 76 396 64 13
International: +1 (970) 987-3055