Over the past few years, India has found itself at the frontline of a rapidly worsening global heat crisis, witnessing increasingly frequent, intense and prolonged heatwaves that are severely impacting public health, productivity and livelihoods. Rising urban temperatures, inadequate building design and widening infrastructure gaps in both urban and rural areas are exacerbating heat stress — especially among disadvantaged groups.

Nearly 17% of India’s urban population lives in informal settlements, often constructed using heat-trapping materials with poor ventilation. Even in formal housing, basic thermal comfort standards are frequently unmet due to inadequate design and construction practices, compounding the effects of the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon. In rural areas, critical gaps in cold chain and refrigeration infrastructure lead to substantial postharvest losses, undermining farmer incomes, food security and supply chains.

Recognizing this, WRI India, along with Social Alpha, ACT Grants, Upaya and the Center for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy (CARBSE) at CEPT University, have launched the Keep Cool Innovation Challenge, a nationwide call for affordable, scalable and people-centered solutions for the country’s most heat-vulnerable populations.

The Keep Cool Innovation Challenge will support innovations that improve thermal comfort and cooling access across places of living, work, education and commute while strengthening livelihoods and supply chains that serve vulnerable groups. By focusing on low-cost, high-quality and practical solutions, the Challenge seeks to reduce the adverse impacts of extreme heat on health, productivity and quality of life, particularly among communities with limited access to reliable electricity and formal infrastructure.

WRI India and partners will connect innovators with stakeholders, including investors, industry partners and implementation networks to accelerate adoption and scale. The Challenge will also support the creation of regional innovation networks across India’s diverse climatic zones.

The Challenge is open to innovators across two tracks: those with a validated prototype and those that are more advanced and have a market-tested solution. In its first phase (April 2026 to December 2026), the Challenge will identify, test and validate innovative cooling and thermal comfort solutions for vulnerable groups across different climatic zones, geographies and socioeconomic contexts. The focus populations and settings include low-income and informal settlements, gig workers and outdoor workers, small and marginal farmers, public health facilities, schools and , and micro and small enterprises.

Selected solutions will be evaluated based on defined criteria, including effectiveness in reducing heat stress, affordability, adaptability to off-grid and weak-grid environments, and potential for scale.

WRI India and partners will support solution deployment, testing and evaluation as part of our broader effort to mainstream people-centric cooling and thermal comfort into policy, markets and practice.

For more details, visit:  

https://www.f6s.com/keep-cool-innovation-challenge