ACT Grants eyeing Rs 500 crore for a second act

Bengaluru: ACT Grants is ready for its second act.

The volunteer-led initiative by 34 Indian entrepreneurs and 44 venture capital funds, set up to provide Rs 100 crore in monetary grants for ideas and companies that combat the Covid-19 pandemic, is looking to put together a Rs 500-crore corpus to fund solutions to problems in education, healthcare, environment and gender diversity over the next decade.

ACT Grants hopes its grants for companies creating an impact will act as seed capital and catalyse further investments in these sectors.


“What we plan to do is find five large causes that will really impact India and raise about ₹500 crore in seed capital. But more importantly, we want to catalyse ₹5,000 crore of scale capital behind that,” said Mohit Bhatnagar, MD of Sequoia Capital.

The initiative, which has grown far beyond its initial set of entrepreneurs and VCs, is looking to pool together resources and time of some of the best minds in India’s startup sector to work on ideas for social good.