Blackfrog Technologies

Vaccine Supply and Delivery Systems

CURRENT IMPACT

As on May 2022

150

Emvólio units given to Directorate of Health and Family Welfare, Assam

83

Healthcare workers trained to use Emvólio

Geographical Focus
  • PAN India
Potential Impact
  • Manufacture

    500


    units of Emvólio

Samridh support

SAMRIDH, through a blended financing structure that combines credit enhancement instruments such as partial risk guarantee/bank guarantee, returnable grant and interest subvention, is enabling Blackfrog to meet its funding requirements to manufacture 500 units of Emvólio. The partial risk guarantee has enabled Blackfrog to avail working capital loan from a financial institution at an interest subvention, wherein SAMRIDH is bearing a portion of the interest cost that will be returned upon achievement of targeted social outcomes. With SAMRIDH’s support, Blackfrog is expected to generate sufficient cash from its operations to achieve sustainability, upon settling the financial obligations.

9
out of
15

vaccines commonly administered today are freeze sensitive[1]

25
%

of vaccines in India wasted due to suboptimal cold chain practices[2]

$
7.5
million

of vaccines in India wasted due to suboptimal cold chain practices[3]

The devastating second wave of COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for mass vaccine administration to break the chain of virus transmission. However, India’s inadequate cold chain infrastructure is a key impediment to achieve the national goal of universal vaccine coverage. Given the COVID-19 vaccines are temperature sensitive, a high percentage of them lose their efficacy by the time they are administered, due to lack of quality supply chain and logistics management system. This particularly poses a challenge for a country like India that has a widely dispersed population.

Vaccine Cold Chain Technology

Blackfrog Technologies has developed Emvólio, a portable medical-grade refrigerator designed to deploy vaccines under controlled temperatures for up to 12 hours. A single Emvólio device can carry 30-50 vials of vaccines, making it possible to administer up to 300-500 doses of life-saving vaccinations. Once charged for 3.5 hours, this 5.5-kg device can be used for 12-15 hours.

SAMRIDH’s support is enabling Blackfrog to strengthen India’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign by improving accessibility to vaccines in remote areas that have inadequate cold chain facilities and unreliable power supplies. So far, they have supplied 100 units of Emvólio and confirmed an order book of 220+ units from C-CAMP, Selco Foundation, Collectives for Integrated Livelihood Initiatives (CInI), and others. They have also commenced modification of the manufacturing facility as per ISO 13485 requirements to enhance production capacity.