Vasudha Foundation: Grantee Spotlight (2025)

Overview

The Giving Green Fund plans to award an unrestricted grant to Vasudha Foundation to support the delivery of Indian sub-national Net Zero roadmaps, stakeholder engagement, and capacity-building initiatives, as well as the Foundation's own institutional strengthening. Vasudha Foundation, based in Delhi, India, adopts a data-driven approach to advancing a clean energy transition in India alongside promoting clean, sustainable, affordable, and 24x7 energy for all.

Vasudha Foundation’s work falls within our philanthropic strategy of supporting a clean energy transition in low- and middle-income countries. Please see Giving Green’s strategy report for more information, including risks and potential co-benefits, sub-strategies, theory of change, funding need, and key uncertainties.

Last updated: October 2025

What is Vasudha Foundation?

Vasudha Foundation, established in 2010, is a leading policy think tank and a clean energy market enabler in India.  It actively conducts primary research, creates reliable data repositories, engages with diverse stakeholders, and works to scale up innovative solutions to promote  evidence-based and inclusive decision-making around clean energy and climate action in India. Vasudha Foundation works closely with central government bodies, such as NITI Aayog – the national government think tank – and state-level governments, including departments in Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa. Vasudha Foundation focuses on renewable and clean energy, electric mobility, and climate action. Its flagship projects center around designing and implementing climate action and renewable energy plans at the state and district levels, in addition to developing specific dashboards and analytics on climate and energy  for policymakers and other relevant stakeholders

What are we funding, and how could it help reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

We are funding Vasudha Foundation’s core operations, with a particular focus on delivering state-level Net Zero roadmaps, stakeholder engagement and capacity-building initiatives, and institutional strengthening. We believe that unrestricted funding will enable Vasudha to accommodate impromptu requests from state governments and expand its outreach to states that have expressed interest in collaborating on net-zero trajectories.

State-level net zero roadmaps: Vasudha Foundation will undertake a series of low-carbon technology-, sector-, and geography-specific assessments to inform states regarding optimal net-zero pathways. They will provide critical support to states in the form of data, case studies, policy and industry stakeholder communication materials, and replicable frameworks for cross-state adoption.

Stakeholder engagement and capacity building: Vasudha Foundation will facilitate structured consultations with state line departments, regulators, and industry associations. Additionally, it will conduct workshops, training sessions, and capacity-building programs to ensure stakeholder buy-in and strengthen local implementation capacity.

Institutional Strengthening: Vasudha Foundation will utilize a portion of the funds to enhance its resources and tools, modeling capabilities, and in-house expertise in low-carbon technologies and sectors, thereby supporting and improving its expanded work across additional states.

We believe that unrestricted funding can equip Vasudha Foundation with greater expertise and flexibility in producing and disseminating technical knowledge to state governments, enabling them to achieve their net-zero targets.

Why do we think Vasudha Foundation will use this funding well?

Vasudha Foundation is a leading think tank and crucial partner in advancing states’ energy transitions, with engagements spanning across nine states to date. Its technical work—for example, the Greenhouse Gas Platform India—has been applauded by the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change. Vasudha Foundation led the creation of a pan-India dashboard—the India Climate and Energy Dashboard—a one-stop dashboard for data on energy, climate, and related economic indicators for NITI Aayog. The dashboard has received recognition both nationally and globally and has endorsed data availability and transparency in India. Many states have acknowledged Vasudha Foundation’s work in advancing their clean energy and net-zero planning and implementation, and consider it to be a trusted partner.  We believe Vasudha Foundation’s track record and policy wins demonstrate its central role in advancing India’s decarbonization agenda.

Giving Green believes that additional climate donations are likely to be most impactful when directed to our top nonprofits. For several reasons, we may choose to recommend grants to other organizations for work that we believe is at least as impactful as grants to our top recommendations. We are highlighting this grant to offer transparency to donors to the Giving Green Fund as well as to provide a resource for donors who are particularly interested in this impact strategy. This is a nonpartisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.

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