China's First Accelerator Dedicated to Scaling Solutions for Sustainable Development

SDGs Unicorn Accelerator (SUA) is China’s first accelerator dedicated to scaling solutions for sustainable development, launched by China Alliance of Social Value Investment (CASVI). In its third year, SUA has empowered 172 start-ups and accelerated 24 social start-ups. We look for early stage (pre-A/A round) entrepreneurs with business solutions for sustainable development. SUA supports them to scale their innovative social and environmental solutions.

1. Who are the #SUA2020Cohort?

This year, we received over 200 applications between May and August, and 24 of them stood out to become the SUA 2020 Cohort.

SUA 2020 Cohort comes from a range of sectors, such as Accessibility (7), Healthcare (2), Technology (2), Green Environment (6) and Consumption (1), and Education (6), but with one common goal, that is to strive for a better world through their ventures.

In terms of annual revenue, half of them are under one million RMB, 8 of them are at the million mark, and the rest are at hundred million RMB. Most of the cohort have not conducted any round of financing, and only 7 start-ups have received financing.

Interested in more details and stories on these social entrepreneurs? Look out for our features coming soon.

2. Who is CASVI and what is sustainable development finance?

China Alliance of Social Value Investment (Shenzhen) is the first non-profit platform that is dedicated to driving sustainable development finance in China. It aims to direct capital towards sustainable development and increase capital alignment towards doing well and doing good, for a society to pursue comprehensive social, environmental and economic value.

3. What is Sustainable Development Value?

Innovation and entrepreneurship, with a focus on sustainable development, tends to operate in areas that have inelastic demand, with high value and large potential customer base. SUA identifies these as indicators for long term value, which is sustainable development value in the long run. We tend to find new economy companies (AI, Big Data, Blockchain) in sectors.

4. How does SUA incubate Sustainable Development Value?

Currently, there is a lack of effective solutions and well-rounded systems to support value incubation and commercialization. The mainstream market employs a single-dimensional understanding of "value", only focuses on building commercial capabilities. Start-ups can only find commercial or industry-themed incubation, which is inadequate to provide in-depth and long-term support through the entire ecosystem.

This is where SUA comes in. We are the first accelerator in China that focuses on scaling solutions for sustainable development value.

SUA achieves this by providing tech-enabled product design, blended finance matchmaking and cross-sector resources integration for impact.

5. Where has SUA been so far?

From our 2018 and 2019 cohorts, SUA has empowered 172 sustainable development start-ups and accelerated a total of 22 start-ups, 2 of which moved on to receive further funding.

SUA Cohorts have gained 50+ news coverage (domestic and international media) and was present on NY Times Square Advertising. We have 5 SUA cohort members as Forbes 30U30 China and achieved 2.37 million media outreach.