On World Health Day, Thursday, 7th April, SAMRIDH Healthcare Blended Financing Facility, supported by USAID, and Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog jointly organized a virtual session on ‘Building Sustainable Businesses for Equitable Health in India’.

Planned as one of the outreach activities to promote the call for applications under the AIM and SAMRIDH partnership, this was the first of the series of virtual sessions on wide-ranging themes within the context of blended finance and market solutions to strengthen the health systems in India. The session moderated by Mr. Himanshu Sikka, Project Director SAMRIDH and brought together industry experts to discuss how technology integration and innovative financing is key to building sustainable and equitable businesses for health.

The event was marked by an insightful panel discussion featuring Dr. K. Madan Gopal, Senior Consultant (Health), NITI Aayog; Mr. Gautam Chakraborty, Senior Health Finance Specialist, USAID/India; Dr. Pankaj Gupta, Non Executive Director, Taurus Global Consulting; and Mr. Rohit Kodancha, Co-founder/CRO ESG Data and Solutions. The panel offered a perspective on the changing healthcare landscape in India, the role of ESG standards for a robust startup ecosystem, importance of digital health, upcoming innovative financing structures, and the role of the private sector towards health systems strengthening in India. Over 100 attendees – including representatives from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, healthcare innovators, impact investors and representatives from development finance institutions – joined the Zoom webinar.

Highlights of the discussion:

• Public-Private Partnerships are needed for mobilizing innovative funding to sustain start-ups who are coming up with innovative health solutions in tier II and III cities.
• With COVID-19, healthcare entities present a wider scope to ensure the compliance to ESG standards to build trust between beneficiaries and healthcare providers as well as influence their risk assessments and future cash inflows.
• Need for tailormade innovative financing solutions approaches to increase access to funding across the health sector while meeting the individual needs of entrepreneurs and innovators.
• India needs to increasingly adopt the National Digital Health Mission. As tech offers asset light and micro services-based architecture, it reduces total cost of ownership to a minimum and democratizes the entire landscape.