The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated that the Indian healthcare system lacks depth, however, given India’s size and resource constraints, there are no easy solutions. Several pockets of healthcare excellence stand out though many of these were created by path-breaking entrepreneurs and innovators who looked for ways of making healthcare accessible and affordable without compromising on quality and standards. A common thread running across these experiences is the challenge in scaling-up.

The handbook combines concepts and frameworks from global literature and best practices with contextual examples and relevant information from the Indian ecosystem. This combination should prove invaluable to healthcare innovators and entrepreneurs in the years ahead.

This handbook is meant as a guide, to provide visibility into the entire process of creating technology-based social enterprises, from ideation to conceptualisation and scaling. It captures details of the enabling ecosystem, well-known frameworks, and other resources. 

A dedicated chapter on scaling features a wide cross-section of case studies across social enterprises — for-profit and not-for-profit — that have found their own paths to scale. The case studies that are covered are across products, services and diagnostics in preventive and curative care.

Anil Misquith, Advisor, ACCORD & Just Change India, Nilgiris district, talks about his journey to the University for the MA in Development programme, his learnings along the way, and his current work with ACCORD.