Toilet Board Coalition

Is this the right programme for you

• You already sell something in the sanitation economy and are ready to scale — the Accelerator is for businesses past the proof-of-concept stage, not for an idea on paper.
• You serve low-income customers in an emerging market in Africa, Asia or Latin America.
• You want coaching, corporate mentors and a route to investors, not a grant or a cheque from the coalition itself.
• You can commit at least three to four hours a week and are willing to report impact data.

How applications work

• Applications go through the online form linked from the coalition's Accelerator pages.
• Its pages give different pictures of the window: the home and Accelerator pages currently say the next cohort is open, while the published cycle has applications closing at the end of April. Check the form itself for the live deadline before you plan around it.
• The published cycle runs from the call for applications to a shortlist shared with member companies, interviews with those companies, a final selection, and the cohort announced before mentoring starts.

How selection works

• Final selection rests with the coalition's corporate members. It states that they select businesses whose stage of growth and needs are aligned with their own priorities and capacities.
• Because the members choose for fit with their own interests, a strong business can still miss out if it does not match what the selecting companies are looking for that year.

What they look for

• A scalable, commercially viable offering in the sanitation economy that is innovative, replicable and proven.
• Evidence that the business already earns revenue and is ready to scale.
• A clear fit with one of the three fields: the toilet marketplace including menstrual hygiene, circular sanitation (collecting, transporting and treating human waste), or smart sanitation (analytics and connected devices).
• Founder time in the room — the programme runs on weekly coaching and bi-weekly mentor calls, so someone senior needs to show up for them.

The Toilet Board Coalition is a business-led coalition of companies working on sanitation, founded in 2015 by Unilever and LIXIL to accelerate business solutions to the sanitation crisis. It runs a not-for-profit Accelerator for small and medium businesses in the sanitation economy, delivered online across Africa, Asia and Latin America. The coalition has more than 80 member companies, and it states plainly that it does not make direct investments in the businesses it works with.

How programmes work

The Accelerator is a 12-month virtual programme offered in English, Spanish, French and Khmer. It runs as a programme year from January to November, with a new cohort starting each January, and it is in its eleventh year. There is no fee to participate, and the coalition takes no equity in the businesses it selects.

Selected businesses get weekly one-to-one sessions with dedicated Toilet Board Coalition coaches, working on their business model, unit economics, strategic milestones and investment readiness. Alongside that, they take part in bi-weekly calls with corporate mentors from LIXIL or Unilever, and they pitch at the quarterly virtual Investor Forums — online events, an hour long, that connect active investors with sanitation-economy entrepreneurs from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Optional in-person meet-ups may be arranged, subject to travel restrictions.

The coalition does not invest itself. What it offers on the money side is readiness work and access: the forums are where entrepreneurs meet investors, and the coaching and mentoring are aimed at getting a business ready for those conversations.

Who can apply

The Accelerator is open to small and medium businesses operating in emerging markets and serving low-income customers across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Applicants need a scalable, commercially viable offering in the sanitation economy that is innovative, replicable and proven. The programme is aimed at businesses that already earn revenue and are ready to scale, rather than at ideas that have not yet been sold.

It works across three fields. The first is the toilet marketplace, including menstrual hygiene. The second is circular sanitation — collecting, transporting and treating human waste. The third is smart sanitation, covering analytics and connected devices. Participants are expected to put in at least three to four hours a week, and to report impact data over the course of the programme. Indian businesses are represented in the alumni portfolio.

Scale

In its own count over ten years, the coalition has graduated 111 small and medium businesses, and it says this work impacts more than 13 million people daily. Its pages do not agree on how those graduates split by region: one page's regional figures add up to 67, another's to 85, and the filters on its alumni portfolio add up to 109, while the headline figure is the same everywhere. The portfolio lists 23 businesses from India. These are the coalition's own published counts, not audited totals, so the regional numbers are best read as orders of magnitude.

Who runs it

Unilever and LIXIL founded the coalition in 2015, and membership is drawn from companies working on sanitation — more than 80 of them. It describes its Accelerator as not-for-profit, and says it charges no fee of any sort. A small operational team works across eight countries and four continents. There is no postal address on its own pages; the contact route is a general email address or the form on its site.

Locations

The programme is delivered online, so founders join from wherever they sit in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Alumni are listed across those three regions, with the largest groups in Asia and Africa. In-person meet-ups are optional and depend on travel conditions at the time.

The coalition's own pages do not agree on where the application window stands. Its home and Accelerator pages currently announce the next cohort as open, while the cycle it publishes has applications closing at the end of April, selection through the middle of the year, and the cohort announced in November. The application form is the live source for the deadline.