Disruptive Technologies and Funds TechEmerge Asia Program STC

Start Date: August 07, 2023

Express Interest By: 7/28/2023

Duration: 50

Topics: Not Available

Business Function: Not Available

Skills: Not Available

Language Skills: English

Assignment Location: India

Institution: IFC

VPU: IFC Global Industries VPU

Contact Person: Mengjia Wan (mwan1@ifc.org)

Task Description: General Information

International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, is the largest global development institution focused exclusively on the private sector in developing countries. In 2015, IFC established TechEmerge (“TE”), a first-of-its-kind program that accelerates the adoption of technologies in emerging markets to drive adoption of sustainable innovation in regions that need it most. TE involves a structured and curated process where early-stage technology companies (“Innovators”) from around the world, are matched with local corporates (“Adopters”) and supported to undertake technology field testing/pilot projects, with the aim of building long-term commercial partnerships.

The inaugural phase of the TE program was focused on the healthcare sector in India, where 17 Innovators were matched with 15 Indian healthcare providers, who were supported to implement 20 pilot projects across 70 clinical sites, reaching 18,000 patients. Based on these strong initial results and feedback, the Health Brazil program was launched, currently supporting implementation of 27 pilot projects involving 21 innovators and 15 Brazilian healthcare providers.

Building on the success and experiences of the TechEmerge India and Brazil projects, IFC has now scaled the program in new geographies and sectors and has launched the TechEmerge Sustainable Cooling Innovation program (“TE SCI” or “Program”).

The overall goals of TE-SCI are to: (i) accelerate the adoption of state-of-the-art cooling technologies for improving efficiency, increasing access, and/or reducing costs of products/services, (ii) reduce energy consumption for cooling and avoidance of GHG emissions, and (iii) facilitate commercial contracts and financing to scale the adoption of technologies.

Funded by the UK’s department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (UK-BEIS), TE-SCI is being implemented in three phases over a period of 4-5 years across Africa, Asia and Latin America and is focused on areas such as space/comfort cooling, industrial/commercial cooling, temperature-controlled logistics, and domestic refrigeration among others.

In Asia, TE-SCI has active projects under implementation in the hospitality sector in India with two Adopters who are undertaking a total of 15 pilots across multiple properties, and in the retail cold chain with a third-party / temperature-controlled logistics provider who undertaking 3 pilots across mobile and stationary cooling applications. In addition, TE-SCI also has a project in Bangladesh, working with a leading e-Grocery platform provider, helping test a suite of mobile and stationary cooling solutions that may be scaled in line with that client’s on-going market expansion. Additional projects in India, exploring Cooling-as-a-Service business models alongside a leading district cooling developer is also under implementation.

Objective/Purpose of Assignment

TE-SCI is in full-scale implementation with a sizeable portfolio and several high probability projects in the pipeline. IFC is seeking to on-board a Short-term Consultant (“Consultant”) to support the following activities:

•  Help manage a complex portfolio of on-going and up-coming pilot projects across the retail cold chain and hospitality sectors in India and Bangladesh.
•  Promote knowledge-sharing and exchange across units within the World Bank Group that are engaged in sustainable cooling efforts at the country, regional and global levels.

Duties and Responsibilities

•  Work closely with team members on monitoring and evaluation aspects of the TE-SCI portfolio in Asia, including by liaising with an external third-party M&E agency.
•  Ensure full compliance with IFC’s internal portfolio monitoring and reporting processes, including on completeness, accuracy, and timeliness on all PSR-related activities.
•  Establish and nurture excellent working relationships with key client counterparts, ensuring smooth flow of information, expectation management, and early identification of bolt-on opportunities for TE-SCI and/or financing from IFC.
•  Liaise with Country Office and Regional IFC and WB counterparts to ensure that TE SCI activities are well-known, understood, and demonstrate early linkages with relevant new initiatives, and CDF/MAS/INR pipeline and portfolio opportunities.
•  Work closely with the HVAC Expert (and other subject matter specialists) to reflect technical inputs in project documents at the design, implementation and monitoring stages.
•  Work closely with team members to help organize knowledge management activities related to TE-SCI in the form of case studies, videos, webinars and reports / publications.
•  Maintain strong links between the core TE-SCI team and the local IFC teams in India and Bangladesh.

Deliverables & Level of Effort

The assignment will commence in August 2023 and the Consultant is expected to work 50 days, extendable to 150 days depending on performance until June 30, 2024, to carry out the Duties and Responsibilities captured herein. Travel may be required as part of on-going supervision activities.

Subject to performance, evolution of the TE-SCI program, and budget availability, the Consultant contract may be extended beyond July 1, 2024.

Selection Criteria

•  Masters level education in business, finance, economics, or a related subject, is preferred.
•  Broad knowledge of the climate agenda and IFC’s approach to mitigation, adaptation, and financing of climate-related projects is required.
•  Minimum 10 years of relevant operational experience within IFC or the World Bank, including hands-on involvement in full cycle project management and supervision is required.
•  Familiarity with IFC’s transaction processing and project management systems and tools is required.
•  Experience managing relationships across IFC’s client-facing and corporate functions is required.

For more information about the TechEmerge program, visit: https://www.techemerge.org/.

For more information about the IFC Disruptive Technology and Funds, visit: https://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/Topics_Ext_Content/IFC_External_Corporate_Site/Venture+Capital

Application Deadline: Please apply on the ST Post site or send your resume and cover letter to Mengjia Wan at mwan1@ifc.org by July 28, 2023.