May 2025 Highlights
Pitching AgriMalawi and Receiving an Acceptance to the Villars Institute
Pitch Day
Naman Jain and I had worked intensively on our microfinancing startup AgriMalawi for 3 weeks. We created a website, designed our pitch deck, and wrote a masterplan. In this short period, we received idea validation from 3 energy experts and cleantech entrepreneurs from Malawi. This gave us a lot of motivation to move forward and execute our idea.
Pitch day was on May 10th. We were very confident about our product and expected to win one of the moonshot awards. I practiced my pitch thoroughly in the days leading up to May 10th. Unfortunately, I stuttered within my first few words. Despite having a bad start, I managed to finish my pitch with clarity and confidence. We were told that the judges really liked our idea and were very close to winning of the awards. Although this was not the desired outcome, we were absolutely committed to deliver on our mission: improve farmer productivity through clean energy.
One of the takeaways from this experience is not to overprepare for a presentation. There’s always a sweet spot.
Villars Ecopreneurship Program
On May 7th, I received an acceptance to the Villars Ecopreneurship Program. If you didn’t know, the Villars Institute is a prestigious climate non-profit organization based out of Switzerland.
The purpose of this program was to give ecopreneurs (entrepreneurs focusing on the climate sector) the foundations to succeed and adapt to challenges. When I applied to the program, I was uncertain that I would get in. Applications this year were very competitive. To my surprise, I was one 1 of 30 ecopreneurs selected worldwide to attend the program.
I will be staying in Villars-Sur-Ollon from August 3rd to 9th with food and accommodations covered.
In short, I am very excited to collaborate with other ecopreneurs and be mentored by experienced ecopreneurs. I will provide an update here after my trip with takeaways and insights.
That’s all for now.