Shell Foundation portfolio partner, S4S Technologies, was announced last week as a winner of the 2023 Earthshot Prize in the ‘Build a Waste-Free World’ category. S4S was awarded £1 million to help scale their innovative solutions and growth in India and beyond.
Impact of S4S Technologies
S4S Technologies (S4S) is an Indian food tech start-up with award winning solar dehydration technology which provides rural communities with affordable solar conduction dryers and food processing equipment so that farms can prepare their crops onsite.
To date, S4S’s impact has helped around 300,000 women smallholder farmers and have recorded 10-15% increase in their profits. While the female micro-entrepreneurs they partner with have seen incomes double or even triple.
Within the next four years, S4S are aiming to:
- Extend their reach to three million smallholder farmers and 30,000 entrepreneurs
- Reduce food waste by 1.2 million tonnes
- Remove the equivalent of 10 million tonnes of CO2
Support from Shell Foundation and FCDO
Shell Foundation’s support to S4S is part of the POWERED and CASEE programmes in partnership with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. 
The POWERED programme is designed to promote gender inclusion in India’s energy development sector as well as strengthen these women farmers businesses with reduced losses, market-linkages and enabling these micro-entrepreneurs as standalone enterprises.
The CASEE programme looks to accelerate energy access for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia and aims to leverage £110m of additional funding into the sector.