Touching a Billion Lives
Sparsh is the Social Innovation programme for Products: Affordable & Relevant to Societal Health. The programme is initiated by BIRAC under the aegis of Department of Biotechnology, Government of India.
The programme is highlighting the need of Innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. The scheme is tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change. The scheme aims to invest in ideas and innovations that improve health care of all Indians and provide affordable product development in social sector.
The scheme is also creating a pool of social innovators in the biotech arena who will identify the specific needs and gaps in healthcare. The social innovators will be supported for developing market-based solutions that has potential to bring health care breakthroughs to vulnerable populations.
Click here to view SPARSH Guidelines
Click here to view list of Recommended Projects
The Objectives :
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1. Identify and provide support to cutting edge innovations towards affordable product development that can bring significant social impact and address challenges of inclusive growth. 2. Provide support in form of impact funding of biotech product innovations (with social goals) that can be scaled. 3. Create and foster a pool of social innovators in biotech and provide a platform to share best practices, understand intricacies of business models in social innovation and network.
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Addressing the unmet National Need
Each call of the Sparsh programme will address an unmet national need, which needs special attention and has large societal implications. These areas will be decided after thematic discussion meetings and comprehensive brainstorming sessions with various stakeholders.
