Musthad, Fornax, and Solumar Selected by Peer Startups to Receive Grant Funding

London, UK (April 17, 2024) – Village Capital has announced that Musthad, Fornax, and Solumar were selected by their peers as the most investment-ready startups in the Sustainability Subscribed Europe 2025 program, supported by Zuora.

The program supported ten early-stage climate startups from five European countries that are leveraging usage-based and dynamic pricing models to increase access to sustainable services and solutions. The startups address key challenges in sectors such as cleantech, sustainable fashion, mobility, industrial emissions, and more.

The peer-selection process, a signature feature of Village Capital’s investment-readiness programs, enables participating founders to evaluate one another and allocate available funding to the most investment-ready startups based on startup achievements and potential. This approach has proven effective in unlocking capital to a broader set of entrepreneurs and predicting future performance more accurately than conventional impact investment processes.

The three top peer-selected startups are:

• Musthad (Italy) – Ranked 1st by peers and awarded USD 25K; helps fashion companies move toward zero-landfill operations with a circular waste management platform powered by automated, data-driven SaaS tools.
• Fornax (United Kingdom) – Tied for 2nd place and awarded USD 15K; reduces the cost and complexity of installing heat pumps, making clean energy systems more accessible to consumers.
• Solumar (Bulgaria) – Tied for 2nd place and awarded USD 15K; provides a deeptech solution that reduces industrial air pollution with significantly lower CAPEX and OPEX across maritime, oil and gas, and chemicals sectors.

The remaining seven startups, WindTak, Zen Running Club, BNS, PlantVoice, Circular IQ, Nellie Technologies, and Gridshare, each received USD 5K milestone grants, bringing the total funding disbursed through the program to USD 95K.

The Sustainability Subscribed demonstrates how dynamic pricing and usage-based approaches can increase access to climate solutions while promoting a more collaborative and inclusive approach to early-stage investment.

For more information or media inquiries, please contact Eva Waweru at Village Capital (eva.waweru@vilcap.com).

About Village Capital 

Village Capital is reinventing the system to back the entrepreneurs of the future. Known for its groundbreaking approaches to supporting founders who are building solutions to emergent social, economic, and environmental challenges, VilCap unlocks critical social and financial capital for early-stage companies to maximize business and impact growth.

Village Capital has operated in Europe since 2016, running over 15 accelerator programs for European entrepreneurs from more than 23 countries in the region. VilCap has supported more than 460 startups from all over Europe, working in sectors such as climate change, data privacy, financial health, and refugee-tech. Learn more at www.vilcap.com and follow @villagecapital.