Early efforts to disseminate cleaner and more efficient cook stoves to those at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) were mostly subsidized through development programs. Meanwhile, many for-profit initiatives succeeded in achieving financial soundness and were able to disseminate improved cook stove technologies while generating local economic value. While it is largely shared among practitioners that a market-based approach is a pre-requisite for sustainable and scalable cook stove dissemination, it is not clear to which extent the level of public and private investments along the overall value chain contribute to the long-term sustainability of market actors.