Teesas, a Nigeria edtech startup, has been named among the five winners of the 2022 Morgan Stanley Sustainable Solutions Collaborative.
Teesas was launched in 2021 and it provides high-quality video tutorials from Africa’s best teachers that explain foundational concepts with delivery in English and major local languages to deepen understanding.
The other selected startups are:
- CarbonBuilt, a startup from Los Angeles, California, delivers a scalable concrete product that reduces embodied carbon by 70 to over 100% compared with traditional concrete, without compromise on performance or production cost;
- ISeeChange, the data company from New Orleans, Louisiana, that empowers communities to report and track real-life climate change impact;
- Notpla, a sustainable packaging startup based in the UK, that delivers the convenience of single-use plastics without the environmental impact and
- OceanMind is a nonprofit based in the UK that powers enforcement and compliance to protect the world’s oceans.
The second cohort will join a bespoke yearlong strategic collaboration with the Institute where they will tap into the full range of Morgan Stanley’s expertise, networks and resources to help them achieve scale. Each winner will also receive an award of $250,000 to increase the impact of their initiative.
The Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing (The Institute) builds scalable finance solutions that seek to deliver competitive financial returns while driving positive environmental and social impact. Founded in 2013, The Institute creates innovative financial products, thoughtful insights and capacity building programs that help maximize capital to create a more sustainable future.
In 2020, Morgan Stanley launched the Sustainable Solutions Collaborative to boost sustainability initiatives that would benefit from partnerships across private and public industries. This second cohort joins a group of global innovators thinking about health care, climate solutions, plastic waste reduction and ecosystem services through re-engineered distribution methods, technology platforms and a new perspective on the importance of nature.
Commenting, CEO and founder, Osayi Izedonmwen said: “It is gratifying that Teesas has been recognized by Morgan Stanley as ‘a breakthrough innovation that addresses systemic change to support a sustainable future,’ and even more so as the only African startup to make the 2022 Sustainable Solutions Collaborative cohort.
“All of us at Teesas remain committed to our mission of becoming Africa’s learning gateway because we believe that with quality education, all other sustainable development goals can be achieved.”
“Each of these organizations has the potential to scale and contribute to creating the type of systemic change needed to achieve a more sustainable future,” said Matthew Slovik, Head of Global Sustainable Finance at Morgan Stanley.
“We are thrilled to welcome these visionary teams into the Collaborative and look forward to seeing their solutions scale as the need to reach a sustainable future is at an all-time-high,” said Shelley O’Connor, Vice Chairman and Head of External Affairs for Morgan Stanley.
For this award, the Institute engaged a diverse network of sustainability thought leaders and practitioners from across a wide variety of industries and sectors to make anonymous nominations. Morgan Stanley carried out a rigorous selection process on the nominations received to identify the innovations with the greatest potential for systemic impact that would also benefit from deep and sustained engagement with Morgan Stanley.
