Brisil Technologies joins the ACT For Environment portfolio

Posted on March 22, 2023February 28, 2024 by admin

With over 100 million tonnes of rice produced annually, India is the second largest producer of rice in the world. But this economic strength also leaves our country to deal with massive quantities of agricultural waste in the form of rice husk and straw. When used as biofuels, these waste materials leave behind an estimated 2-3 million tonnes of Rice Husk Ash (RHA) – which is often dumped in open spaces across India, leading to significant air pollution.

But there is a silver lining. The high silica content in RHA makes it an attractive source for extracting silica for industrial use; thus providing a sustainable solution to its growing demand. Regular silica production is traditionally done through illegal sand mining which ends up damaging the nearby rivers, floodplains and water tables.

Brisil Technologies has developed a patented technology that uses RHA to produce green precipitated silica and highly porous carbon, thus creating new commercial opportunities for what has only been considered a waste product while having a tremendous environmental and economic impact. Every ton of silica produced from Brisil’s technology can reduce over 10,000 Kgs equivalent of CO2 emissions as compared to traditional silica extraction processes and minimize open dumping of over 2000 Kg of rice husk/straw ash. But more importantly, the process is 35% more energy efficient compared to traditional extraction processes and also prevents the destruction of riverbeds and aquatic ecosystems that are a direct result of sand mining.

Since Brisil identified the problem and the market opportunity a decade ago, they have now successfully commercialised the technology and established trust with numerous Fortune 500 companies to export their green precipitated silica across Southeast Asia, Japan, Europe, US and Brazil. The company, founded by Tanmay Pandya, exemplifies India-focused frugal innovations, the environmental impact of green chemistry, and the business potential of green silica.

With Brisil’s solution, the world has a chance to embrace a more sustainable future – where waste is used as a valuable resource instead of having a negative environmental impact. We’re proud to support them on their journey and look forward to helping them scale their product further!

ACT For Education brings English Quest on board

Posted on March 16, 2023February 28, 2024 by admin

In India, English is often seen as an aspirational language. However, for many students who attend vernacular medium schools in small towns, communicating in English can be a struggle. While some may argue that the poor quality of teaching in government or affordable private schools is to blame, the curriculum itself also plays a role. Fluency in any language requires more than just grammar and vocabulary; it is closely tied to speaking and listening. Without a foundation in oral communication, students are more likely to struggle with English in the future.

It’s time to give students in small towns the tools they need to break down the language barrier and unlock a world of opportunities – and this is where English Quest comes in. With a mission to bridge the gap, they’ve developed an innovative curriculum that combines verbal and non-verbal cueing techniques to help students improve their English communication skills – available at an affordable price point of just Rs. 600 per student.

By using a combination of English Quest app and projectors in schools, local teachers are trained to use scripted lesson plans and supportive images to help students develop relationships with text-to-speech. The pedagogy is based on Direct Instruction, Spoken English (DISE) – an approach that has proven to be highly effective in teaching English in other countries. This active learning approach helps students become confident and fluent in their spoken English.

In the past 5 months, 85% of students learning with English Quest have achieved mastery over the English level of A1. Over a 4 year course period, English Quest aims to take every child from a beginner level (A1) to an upper intermediate level (B2).

ACT For Education is thrilled to partner with English Quest to help them scale their solution to 500 schools by 2024 and enable 1 million students become confident English communicators!

ACT kicks off Tech Advisors For Social Change 2.0

Posted on February 21, 2023February 28, 2024 by admin

When we first launched the Tech Advisors For Social Change program in 2022, we hoped for it to address a big gap that we had observed in the tech capabilities of social enterprises. Through our engagement with multiple such organisations, both in and outside of our portfolio, we realised that they often didn’t have the deep expertise needed to build a scalable tech architecture – something that hindered their ability to grow.

As an organisation that’s rooted at the cusp of the venture capital and startup ecosystems and deeply believes in the power of collective action, we instinctively knew that leveraging external tech experts could not only give social enterprises the advisory they needed, but also give such volunteers an opportunity to contribute towards creating social impact in a meaningful way.

It all started as a tweet by Mekin Maheshwari, our ACT For Education investing committee member, that invited fellow techies from his network to apply for the Tech Advisors For Social Change program – that single tweet catalysed 80+ tech experts to raise their hands and our journey began in the most serendipitous of ways!

Our first cohort had 8 senior tech experts, each of whom we matched to a social impact organisation in the education space that had identified a very specific tech challenge statement. The 3-4 month engagement saw these advisors collaborate with their respective matched organisations on areas that ranged from restructuring backend operations to influence scale or creating effective data dashboards to gain user insights.

Saraswati Chandra was one such Tech Advisor who helped Rocket Learning, an ed-tech non-profit working on early childhood education, create a product testing framework that gamified their Whatsapp based solution and accelerated the participating children’s engagement!

“Building products and technologies that work at scale is hard. Through my startup journey, I have benefited from advisors who inspired me to pay it forward. It was great to apply product-building concepts to solutions that are designed for Bharat,” she says.

Our experience with the first cohort bolstered our conviction in our approach and we focused on fine-tuning the program structure to enable a better experience for both sides involved. Our biggest takeaway was the need to foster a growing community of tech experts that could go beyond short-term 1:1 relationships to become universally accessible to social enterprises when they encountered challenges and needed custom-focused mentorship.

So this year, as we get the 2nd cohort in gear, we’ve fine-tuned our approach to match a resident advisor to each participating organisation as well as match a visiting advisor for specific use cases. We have also expanded the program to organisations within the healthcare and climate action spaces and are working with the social enterprises to hyper-define their tech challenge in a way that it’s realistically solvable within a 3 month time period.

Tech Advisors For Social Change 2.0 has greatly benefited from a strategic collaboration with Vidyasagar Bedida, who has helped us evaluate the submissions by social impact organisations on product scope, urgency of the problem statement as well as the founder’s vision. We’ve shortlisted a diverse group of 10 organisations solving crucial issues through telemedicine solutions, personalised learning platforms and renewable fuel production etc. that need support with optimising data architecture, building data analytical capability and improving the UX/UI of the platform.

Simultaneously, we leveraged ACT’s community to invite seasoned tech experts from the for-profit/startup world and received 90+ signups from folks across companies like Groww, Amazon, Google etc. They were invited to join demo sessions by participating social enterprises to give them an opportunity to understand the challenge statement with the founder and gain insight into its complexity. Finally, we facilitated the final matches based on the skill requirements for the project and the preferences indicated by the advisors.

We’re excited for the 2nd cohort to deep dive into their 12 week engagement and hope to build this program into a thriving community that takes ACTion!

iKure joins the ACT For Health portfolio

Posted on December 7, 2022February 28, 2024 by admin

During the onslaught of COVID, India’s healthcare infrastructure faced several challenges as we struggled with a shortage of beds and oxygen during the two waves of the pandemic. While the crisis has slowly receded, it has left an indelible impact by disrupting primary healthcare delivery in India in the following ways:

Restricted access to healthcare facilities: During the lockdown, healthcare facilities were either closed, converted to COVID hospitals/containment zones or were operated with reduced staff. Patients were thus unable to get timely treatment and medicines.

Transportation challenges: Patients faced challenges in travelling to healthcare facilities due to unavailability of adequate transportation.

Diversion of healthcare workers: ASHA workers were diverted towards COVID-19 screening through door-to-door visits. This adversely impacted their other primary healthcare responsibilities.

Reduction in home visits by ASHAs: Many ASHAs did not have adequate PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) including masks, gloves and sanitizers. Due to this, they were unable to perform their regular home visits.

Loss of family income: A large number of families were affected by loss of income. This impacted their access to proper nutrition, medicines and clinical treatment.

High-risk stratification for patients with comorbidities: Patients with existing chronic conditions were more vulnerable to COVID and thus, classified as a high-risk category. They faced severe challenges in accessing healthcare facilities and getting medicines regularly.

Sunderbans is a geographically vulnerable place as it experiences natural calamities on a regular basis and this vulnerability of the delta often affects people’s access to healthcare services. As per the International Research Journal of Social Sciences in 2014, not a single block has been found where less than 30,000 people are served by one PHC.

COVID has further exacerbated the situation by impacting the livelihoods of the 5 million people in Sunderbans, making healthcare even more inaccessible than it already was.

To combat this gap in healthcare delivery, solutions such as iKure are meeting primary healthcare and prevention needs through a unique combination of health outreach initiative, skills development and technology intervention.

iKure’s health management services span preventive, promotive and curative aspects of healthcare and focuses on addressing primary healthcare needs across rural, semi-urban as well as urban areas. Leveraging the power of ICT, they have developed a medical collaboration platform called Wireless Health Incident Monitoring System – WHIMs – which is an aided telemedicine platform used by doctors & iKure’s community health workers to screen and monitor patients at their doorstep.

The platform allows patients to:

Connect with doctors instantly
Manage patients health profiles
Make patient diagnosis
Provide access to treatment plans and prescriptions

ACT For Health is supporting iKure in strengthening primary care delivery in Satjelia and Kumirmari islands of Sunderbans by setting up clinics to offer face to face and teleconsultation services, pathology, ophthalmology, physiotherapy, dermatology, sale of medicine, health screening camps and other such services.

Through this project we aim to cater to 1 lakh people across these islands by leveraging technology to train community health workers and deploy primary care protocols on ground.

ACT For Health brings Medprime on board

Posted on December 7, 2022February 28, 2024 by admin

According to a survey, 70-80% of clinical decisions require lab reports and on an average, two tests are prescribed per patient. However, the entire process is still dependent on the access to pathology labs and trained pathologists. In their absence, health professionals often resort to empirical decision making or ‘gut feelings’ for treatment, leading to massive misuse of antibiotic prescriptions.

Although point of care devices (POC) continue to foray into underserved locations, they’re limited by recurring cost and minimal options. Microscopy continues to be a crucial component for pathology labs to inspect body fluids in order to detect infections and identify cellular abnormalities. However, primary and secondary care in the country faces an acute shortage of manpower and trained pathologists; with only 1 pathologist serving approx. 65K people in the country. This shortage has led to the proliferation of many unlicensed labs and personal operations in the market. On the other hand, pathology labs are majorly concentrated in urban areas and far from reach of the rural population. It is therefore important to address these massive gaps in the healthcare delivery system.

We’re observing a paradigm shift in pathology with the growing acceptance of digital microscopes over optical ones – given the ability to instantly store and share images from a remote primary healthcare set-up with a pathologist sitting in an urban setting. It is also easier to train the lab technicians in digital microscopes and the solution reduces the time taken for diagnosis by enabling better clarity of the images.

Cilika, a digital microscopy solution developed by MedPrime Technologies, aims to facilitate telepathology in low resource settings where both infrastructure and human resources are limited. For example, patients in Melghat in the Amravati district of Maharashtra have to travel about 100 km to get tests done. Additional costs incurred due to travel and wage loss often discourage them from availing diagnostic conditions, thereby often exacerbating their medical conditions due to lack of timely treatment. Cilika will allow pathologists to remotely analyse the test reports for patients living in Melghat without the hassle of transporting or storing the sample slides which will turn out to be quite cost-effective in the long term.

ACT For Health will support MedPrime in generating evidence for tele-pathology use cases by deploying Cilika devices in various CHC’s, rural hospitals, NGOs across India with the aim of decentralising such healthcare services.

Zero Circle joins the ACT For Environment collective

Posted on November 3, 2022February 28, 2024 by admin

Plastic is universally considered to be one of the biggest climate change problems that needs to be addressed. It covers our meals, carries our clothes and commodities and increasingly threatens our oceans – even while being found in our food and our blood streams. Packaging is the largest end-user segment for plastic products, accounting for more than 40% of the total plastic usage in the world.

With the petrochemical and plastic industries planning a massive expansion in production, the problem is on track to get much worse. If plastic production and use grow as currently planned, by 2030, these emissions could reach 1.34 gigatons per year—equivalent to the emissions released by over 295 new 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants.

At the same time, the problem with plastic goes much deeper than the fossil fuels used to make it, and the emissions released as a result. It goes to how plastics are managed at end-of-life – in other words, where does the used plastic go? As we’ve seen, the short answer to that is mostly water bodies and landfills and unfortunately, even globally, our recycling rates are sub 10%. Plastic recycling has many challenges, including inconsistent demand for the recycled material, inadequate recycling infrastructure / space as well as complexity of processing many different types of plastic.

Zero Circle (ZC) is addressing the growing and global issue of plastic waste management by building an alternative to plastic packaging and related products. ZC extracts dried biomass from seaweed, and then uses proprietary processes to make seaweed resins. These resins can be used to make flexible films for a multitude of use cases, including food covering, bags,and packaging. The final product is fully home-compostable and marine-degradable with no residues. This means that not only can the films created from ZC resins be completely composted without any industrial facilities, the products are also fully ocean safe.

A brief digression here to jump into what some of these terms mean:

Bioplastics: Bioplastic can mean that a material is biobased. Bioplastic can also mean that a material is biodegradable. These terms are not mutually exclusive; biobased refers to the feedstock – what was used as the input material – whereas biodegradable refers to the end of life of the material. Therefore, a petroleum-based plastic that is biodegradable counts as a bioplastic, as does the vice versa of a biobased plastic that is not biodegradable.

Biodegradable: These are materials that can be broken down by microbial activity (bacteria and/or fungi) into carbon dioxide, water vapor, and microbial biomass.

Compostable: These are materials that disintegrate and biodegrade under specific conditions and time-frames without releasing any harmful chemicals, toxic components, or heavy metals.

Biodegradable materials will not necessarily biodegrade of their own accord in unmanaged environments such as landfills. Without the right conditions – temperature, moisture and oxygenation – biodegradable materials can actually persist in the environment for long periods of time or worse, disintegrate into smaller and smaller microplastics invisible to the human eye. This is why the aim is for plastics to either be circulated completely, or composted.

The environmental impact potential of the ZC product is immense:

• Carbon absorption by the seaweed produced: Seaweed production, which will be used as raw material for ZC’s product, has significant natural carbon absorption capabilities. As per estimates, 1 metric ton of dried seaweed can absorb up to 120 kg of CO2.
• Offsetting of the carbon emission from the plastic replaced: As per industry assessments, each ton of plastic resin produced, leads to generation of 1.89 metric ton CO2 from cradle-to-resin. As ZC is a true substitute, each ton of plastic which ZC replaces, has a direct impact on CO2 emission by 1.89 metric ton.

And this is in addition to the human health benefits – as per a recent study, scientists analysed blood samples from 22 anonymous donors, all healthy adults, and found plastic particles in 17.

We are excited to partner with the Zero Circle team to support the scaling and growth of their pioneering resins, for a number of reasons:

1. Massive potential impact on plastic waste through a truly circular solution –
a. Using seaweed (which is better than other bio-plastics) for “plastic” solutions
b. Home-compostable film and packaging
c. Additional revenue opportunities for seaweed cultivators / farmers
2. Strong market tailwinds from emerging demand for sustainable packaging and a conducive regulatory environment –
a. Growing demand from large FMCGs and corporates with increasing incentive to meet net-zero targets
b. Government of India’s new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) rules mandate recycling and reusing a certain percentage of plastic produced by manufacturers, importers and brand owners thus creating additional incentives to move towards plastic alternatives.
3. Dynamic, mission-driven team with a clear understanding of the market

Addressing the plastics problem, globally, will require a number of solutions to come together. The demand for packaging materials is not going to abate anytime in the near future, and as such, we see innovative and environmentally sustainable substitutes as a critical piece of the solution.

ACT For Environment Grantee: AP Chemi

Posted on October 20, 2022February 28, 2024 by admin

Plastic has become an all-pervasive part of life on Earth. ~350 million tonnes of plastic waste is generated globally each year – only 20% of this waste is recycled while the remaining 80% makes its way to landfills, water streams or gets incinerated. Right from our blood streams to oceans, plastic chokes life.

But given the reality of plastic being a lifeline of a large number of industries, removing or replacing and managing it has been a herculean task. Dumping this waste for someone else to manage has been the easiest solution.

Historically, efforts have been made to convert mixed plastic waste to energy through pyrolysis – a process through which matter is broken down in the absence of oxygen to produce liquid oil which can potentially be used as an industrial fuel. Pyrolysis enables the recycling of materials which are otherwise inappropriate for conventional recycling. However, conventional pyrolysis of mixed plastic waste often produces contaminated oil that is unsuitable for use by refineries/petrochemical plants as is and is also usually commercially unviable to purify.

APChemi has broken this cycle. Their patented pyrolysis and oil purification technology PUREMAX™ removes contaminants from pyrolysis oil to produce a high quality oil PUROIL™ from mixed plastic & biomass waste. Through their proprietary technology, they have been successful in reducing the cost (capex and opex) of pyrolysis oil purification by multi-folds. Further, PUROIL™ has been proven to be the best feedstock for the production of biofuels, circular polymers, sustainable chemicals and sustainable vehicle fuels.

APChemi minimises the amount of plastic that gets dumped by enabling circularity for the post-consumer mixed plastic waste; by 2028, they plan to recycle 500 million kgs of plastic per year!

From an environmental standpoint, this is a double whammy – achievement of scalable plastic circularity and the production of feedstock (PUROIL™) for the generation of biofuels which can potentially replace fossil fuels.

Since 2007, APChemi has established over 45 pyrolysis plants across Asia, Europe, Africa and Middle East where they provide turnkey sustainable pyrolysis solutions. They have converted ~180k tonnes of plastic to oil and reduced dependency on crude oil by ~110k tonnes.

ACT For Environment will support APChemi in building a first-of-its-kind pyrolysis oil purification which can purify 17.5 thousand tons of pyrolysis oil. This project will exemplify the scalability of sustainable recycling of non-recyclable plastic waste globally.

We are beyond excited to partner with APChemi in their journey to build global waste circularity and produce clean energy!

ACT For Environment Grantee: Agri To Power (A2P)

Posted on October 20, 2022February 28, 2024 by admin

India produces approximately 500 million tonnes of crop residue every year – most of which is burnt on-site, causing serious air pollution. Researchers estimate that each year, farmers burn about 23 million tonnes of paddy stubble in India. If stacked in 20 kg, 38 cm tall bales, that massive amount of straw would reach a height of almost 430,000 Kms. Stubble burning in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh is attributed as one of the biggest contributors to the rising levels of air pollution in the region during winters; accounting for close to 30% of Delhi’s winter air pollution.

For many farmers, burning off crop leftovers from previous harvests is the most cost-effective way to clear the fields for the next planting and get rid of weeds and pests. At a macro level, this practice has resulted in India accounting for 13% of total global carbon emissions for the 2015-2020 period.

At the same time, 60-70% of the electricity generated at thermal power plants comes from burning fossil fuels; often low-grade coal. In 2021, the Government of India launched the SAMARTH mission under which power plants are mandated to use between 5% and 10% of biomass alongside coal.

ACT For Environment is proud to support A2P Energy and their new biomass marketplace Carbon2Climate – an AI based platform that uses satellite imagery to identify areas where crop waste burning is prevalent & creates a marketplace where crop waste can be turned into clean biofuels instead. It connects farmers, manufacturers and buyers of biofuels as well as covers the entire value chain of biomass from identification and collection to processing and the end use of the green fuel supply chain.
A2P was one of the winners of ACT’s India Clean Air Challenge (ICAC) held in early 2022. Their solution displays a deep understanding of the crop burning challenge, aligns with the farmers’ economic realities and helps create radical efficiencies in the market for environmental impact.

ACT For Environment will help A2P increase the adoption of biomass and biofuels produced from agriculture waste to 1600 MT monthly and 6800 MT respectively. This has the potential significant environmental impact – the use of 6800 MT of green fuel for conventional fuel, the reduction of 9928 MT of CO2 emissions and the prevention of 20.4 tonnes of particulate matter from entering the atmosphere.

The company will implement a program model to onboard biomass and biogas producers as well as buyers on its proprietary trading platform, test biomass and biogas quality and create market linkages so that farmers, FPOs and related groups are able to increase their income and reduce crop burning.

Solving for air quality issues across India will take multiple interventions with multiple stakeholders like policy makers, businesses and citizens – it is a complex balancing act of economics and environment. We are excited to see A2P Energy at the forefront of fighting this critical problem with their technological solution that reduces agricultural emissions and increases clean energy use in the country.

ACT For Health brings Navya Care on board

Posted on October 11, 2022February 28, 2024 by admin

According to the National Cancer Registry, 1 in 8 Indian men and 1 in 9 Indian women will develop some form of cancer in their lifetime.

These outcomes rank cancer as the most frequent non-communicable disease in India. The mortality:incidence ratio of 0.68 in India is far higher than that in very high human development index countries (0.38) as well as high HDI countries (0.57). Major causes for increased mortality ratio are lack of awareness and illiteracy leading to an advanced stage of cancer diagnosis, limited access to quality cancer care and inability of patients to afford optimum cancer care.

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected cancer care services, with many oncology centres having been restructured to create COVID-19 units. It is estimated that approximately 100,000 cancer cases per month will go undiagnosed & delivering cancer care that complies with standard clinical guidelines improves cure, longevity, and quality of life will be further impacted.

To combat these disparities in standards of care and its availability, the National Cancer Grid (NCG) has the primary mandate of working towards uniform standards of care across India by adopting evidence-based management guidelines. However, an analysis of 21 cases at an AB empaneled hospital in a single day showed only 31% complied with NCG treatment guidelines, while 69% had treatment errors.

There are innovative solutions, like the one being piloted by Navya Care, that use the technology plus service model to empower patients with personalised, evidence-based cancer treatment plans. Navya’s AI-based intervention has three USPTO patents and functions as a sophisticated engine that requires trained clinical staff to operate. The guidelines engine matches a patient’s medical record with clinical guidelines from the National Cancer Grid (NCG) and National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN).

The Evidence Engine uses published literature from randomised control trials and global conferences, and matches new patient data with the most applicable high quality evidence.
The Experience Engine uses case histories, treatment decisions of experts at tertiary care centres, and patient outcomes, to create an untapped source of experiential knowledge.
The Expert App quickly converts a medical case into a structured summary, presents evidence and experience-based options (above), and patient preference considerations, and collects and combines opinions from multiple experts – online.

ACT is excited to support Navya in developing the Earthshot Engine for breast, lung and oral cancer and thereby enable savings by cutting overtreatment cost of ~30,000 per patient, improve patient outcomes by avoiding undertreatment and ensure 100% of the patients coming to Navya receive NCG compliant care.

ACT For Health welcomes Swasth Alliance to its portfolio in support of the Health Claims Exchange

Posted on October 7, 2022February 28, 2024 by admin

A big challenge we see with universal health coverage in India is the financeability of care and the corresponding implications for health related poverty – there is an inability to access meaningful care, especially for the missing middle in India. Where insurance exists, it is often reimbursement based, involves significant fraud risk and is costly to process with long lead times.

Swasth is a multi-stakeholder health sector alliance that leverages digital technologies and healthcare expertise to drive healthcare inclusion & better health outcomes for India.

A key area of work for Swasth is the Health Claims Exchange (HCX) which has the potential to become a transformative factor in reaching Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in India.

HCX is a set of standards created by an open community of volunteers convened by the Swasth Alliance that is now being used to build a national claims routing network that can be interoperably accessed and used by all payers in the system – from private insurers to public and community payers.

As one of the core building blocks of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission’s architecture, HCX’s construct is inspired by the recommendations of the 2019 Joint Working Group convened by National Health Authority (NHA) and Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDAI).

By enabling payer-provider interactions irrespective of who the payers and providers are, it focuses on improving the efficiency of insurance and other health benefit payments in India – both for those who are already insured (public and private) as well as for those who currently have no insurance (the missing middle).

The same infrastructure can support the transfer/exchange of any kind of health related information between health system participants – from doctors and healthcare providers to pharmacists, insurers and patients. The exchange can carry information on the services rendered, value delivered and the corresponding payments made or claimed for.

The immediate goal for HCX is to transform the viability and scale of cashless claims processing by:

Improving patient experience & outcomes: By decreasing the 6-24 additional hours spent by patients in hospitals waiting for payments to come through.

Reducing risk for payers/insurers by reducing fraud: By enabling reduced fraud, support the evolution and entry of new payers and new kinds of payers.

Reducing the cost of claims processing: Today, the cost of processing a claim ranges between Rs. 500-2000. This makes paying for small ticket items like primary care impossible. HCX will drive this cost down and enable payers to efficiently cover a wider range of services for the patient.

Reducing the time of claims processing: HCX will mean faster resolution of claims, therefore reducing the financial burden for insurance holders.

Enabling health benefits interoperability between all health stakeholders: Standardisation will lead to ease of information transfer & improve interoperability which will enable patients and policy holders to explore new, less expensive options.

Hence, HCX will act as the foundation of a wider health information exchange (HIX) that will eventually underpin universal value-based healthcare in India – in line with SDG 3.8, which is to ‘achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all’.

We believe that Swasth is uniquely positioned as the prime mover of foundational infrastructure – governance infrastructure, collaborative infrastructure, technological infrastructure – and we look forward to working with them in pursuit of our aspiration for a genuine population scale health for all goal!