New Delhi, April 9, 2026: Amidst rising heat stress in India, WRI India, along with Social Alpha, ACT Grants, Upaya and the Center for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy (CARBSE) – CEPT University,  launched the Keep Cool Innovation Challenge, a nation-wide call for affordable, scalable, and people‑centered solutions for the country’s most heat‑vulnerable populations.

Over the past few years, India has been at the frontline of a worsening global heat crisis, with more frequent, intense, and prolonged periods of extreme heat severely impacting public health, productivity, and livelihoods. Rising urban temperatures, inadequate building design, and widening infrastructure gaps across urban and rural areas are exacerbating heat stress — especially among disadvantaged groups. 

Nearly 17% of the urban population live in informal settlements with heat-trapping materials and 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, in addition to rising heat stress, inadequate cold chain and refrigeration infrastructure lead to substantial postharvest losses, undermining farmer incomes, food security, and supply chains. 

The Keep Cool Innovation Challenge aims to bridge this gap by supporting innovations that improve thermal comfort and cooling access across places of living, work, education, and commute while strengthening livelihoods and supply chains. By focusing on low‑cost, high-quality, and practical solutions, it 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 will connect innovators with 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.

Madhav Pai, CEO, WRI India, said, “Cooling is no longer a luxury but a necessity. We are excited to launch this initiative to find solutions to rising heat which is a here-and-now problem that impacts all of us, but more so vulnerable communities that have no choice but to tackle it for longer and longer periods of time. In spite of the devastating effect it has on their ability to live, work and survive, there has been a limited understanding of the kind of solutions that are needed and how they could be made most effective and accessible. This challenge is about finding, testing, and scaling cooling innovations that can make a real difference to the lives of people."

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-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 anganwadis, 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.

Yash Shukla, Centre Head, CARBSE-CEPT University, said, “Thermal comfort is increasingly recognised as a fundamental necessity rather than a luxury. In the Indian context, ensuring equitable access to cooling represents one of the most effective strategies for enhancing physiological well-being across diverse socio-economic strata. There is a critical need for sustained research and development to revive traditional practices, retain effective passive strategies, and innovate low-carbon cooling solutions. Such technologies must be environmentally sustainable, scalable, and cost-effective. Scientifically validated cooling interventions offer the potential to address thermal needs across varied climatic zones, ensuring long-term resilience and broader societal benefit”.

Rachna Chandrashekhar, Associate Director & Head of Accelerator, Upaya Social Ventures, shares, “At Upaya, we see heat stress not just as a climate challenge, but as a livelihood crisis, disproportionately impacting those with the least ability to adapt. For micro-entrepreneurs and informal workers, rising temperatures translate directly into lost incomes, reduced productivity, and increased vulnerability. Building climate resilience, therefore, must start with people by enabling access to affordable, locally relevant solutions that protect both livelihoods and dignity. This is critical to ensuring that the transition to a cooler future is also an equitable one.”

Manoj Kumar, Founder, Social Alpha, said, “Rising temperatures, rapid urbanisation, and the hard limits of existing technology are converging at precisely the wrong moment. The deeper trap is the cooling dilemma itself - more air conditioning means more energy demand, more emissions, and more heat, a cycle that incremental solutions cannot break. Promising innovations exist, from solid state cooling and advanced heat pumps to evaporative, desiccant, and material-based approaches that improve efficiency while reducing energy demand - but they rarely survive the journey from lab to market at the scale and cost that makes them accessible to those who need them most. That translation failure is precisely where Social Alpha works. Our partnership with WRI India is a deliberate bet on closing that gap - curating the most credible deep science cooling innovations, putting them through rigorous derisking, and building the deployment pathways that turn laboratory breakthroughs into climate resilient solutions at scale.” 

Sruthi Shanmugam, Lead, ACT for Environment, said, “Heat stress is no longer an episodic risk, it is a persistent adaptation challenge that will increasingly shape how people live and work across India. The real question is not just what solutions are designed, but whether they can endure the complexity of real-world conditions, across climates, infrastructure constraints, and everyday use. There is a critical need to move from promising pilots to approaches that demonstrate consistent performance in the environments where heat stress is most acute, because that is what will ultimately enable resilience at scale."

WRI India, in collaboration with Social Alpha, ACT Capital Foundation, Upaya and CARBSE, will support solution deployment, testing, and evaluation as part of a broader effort to mainstream people-centric cooling and thermal comfort into policy, markets, and practice.

For more details, visit: https://wri-india.org/events/2026/4/launch-keep-cool-innovation-challenge


Media Contact: Tanushree Venkatraman, WRI India | [email protected]

About WRI India 
WRI India, an independent charity legally registered as the India Resources Trust, provides objective information and practical proposals to foster environmentally sound and socially equitable development. Through research, analysis, and recommendations, WRI India puts ideas into action to build transformative solutions to protect the earth, promote livelihoods, and enhance human well-being. Know more: wri-india.org  

About CARBSE-CRDF, CEPT University
The Center for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy (CARBSE) aims to provide impetus for research in building science, leading to energy efficiency in the built environment. Its objective is to conduct in-depth research in the fields of energy-efficient building design, energy-efficient construction processes, environmentally friendly construction materials, cooling and comfort, the health and well-being of building occupants, and resource audit & management. CARBSE operates under the CEPT Research and Development Foundation, CEPT University, as one of the thematic research centers.  

About Social Alpha
Social Alpha is a multistage innovation curation and venture development platform for science and technology start-ups that address the most critical social, economic and environmental challenges through the power of entrepreneurship and market-creating innovations. Since its inception in 2016, Social Alpha has nurtured over 400+ startups, disbursed 200+ catalytic grants, and made 100+ seed investments.  
For more information, please visit www.socialalpha.org.

About ACT Capital Foundation
ACT is an Indian non-profit venture philanthropy platform that believes an entrepreneurial mindset, technology, innovation, and collective action can drive meaningful social impact at scale. With a strong bias for action, ACT funds and supports tech-first innovations addressing India’s most critical social needs through capital, connections, and collectives. Know more at actgrants.in

About Upaya Social Ventures
Upaya Social Ventures is a non-profit organization building an inclusive economy by providing investment and support to early-stage businesses, creating dignified jobs for people living in the most extreme poverty.

Upaya’s award-winning, impact-first model seeks out and supports oft-overlooked companies creating work that is safe, stable, inclusive, and rewarding — generating a transformative impact on families, communities, and economies.

Since its founding in 2011, Upaya’s portfolio companies have created over 100,000 dignified jobs across India. Please visit upayasv.org for more information.