SAMRIDH participated in a webinar hosted by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) on January 13^th, 2020. This event was part of the webinar series BMGF initiated in 2020, as a Global knowledge sharing platform to build a community on Health Systems Design. The objective of this session was four-fold; 1) To introduce and discuss the program strategy of SAMRIDH – the Healthcare Blended Finance Facility under the PAHAL program (supported by USAID); 2) Highlight the role and scope of collaboration with key program partners of SAMRIDH; 3) Demystify the concept of blended finance, including its role as a force multiplier in advancing development priorities, the challenges in using these instruments and potential strategies to mitigate the inherent risks associated with them.

The session was attended by over 65 participants representing international partners of Gates Foundation. The speakers included senior members from USAID/India. National Health Authority (NHA) – Government of India, The Rockefeller Foundation, Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (at IIT Delhi) and IPE Global. Highlighting the key features of SAMRIDH, the speakers drew attention towards the program’s unique proposition to provide customized financial solutions to a range of healthcare innovation including technology as well as process innovations. In addition, they unanimously emphasized on the program’s access to PMJAY-AB’s network of 24500 healthcare facilities, opening the opportunity for SAMRIDH to mainstream the innovations they support. This collaboration with NHA is seen as a pivotal step towards achieving the overarching program goal of improving access to affordable and quality healthcare services for the most vulnerable population of the country.

Other key takeaways from the session include: Healthcare innovations are critical to optimise service delivery and cater to increasing demands with limited supply available in India’s healthcare sector; Philanthropic capital should be leveraged as risk capital through blended finance instruments, to support innovations that can solve development challenges (particularly healthcare where there is limited or no cost recovery component); Metrics/indicators to measure impact of blended finance programs need to factor in success criteria of multiple stakeholders; Partnerships are critical to drive innovations, as they combine complimentary strength of different stakeholders in terms of technology, finance, regulatory, business linkages etc.