2024 Entrepreneurs for Resilience Award

Therefore, they are joining forces with the Digital Connected Care Coalition and the UBS Optimus Foundation to support social entrepreneurs in the healthcare space through the Entrepreneurs for Resilience Award, pooling the experience, network, solutions and funding with these new partners.

They invite applications from social entrepreneurs who aim to improve low-income people’s access to quality primary healthcare in LMICs by offering a hybrid delivery model that combines a physical point of care and supportive digital tools.

Scope

• Challenges to increasing the availability of quality primary healthcare, especially for low-income and rural populations, have proved pervasive and difficult to overcome. Digital health solutions have contributed crucially to increasing the quality of, standardising the delivery of and lowering the costs of care. It remains difficult, however, to bring about changes in health-related behaviour and healthcare delivery through purely digital means.
• Often underpinned by insurance or other financing solutions, innovative primary care approaches are emerging that combine digital and in-person services. These hybrid models include “brick and click” elements, where brick refers to a (fixed or mobile) point of care staffed by a health worker – to retain the human connection and trust – and click refers to a digital tool supporting physical delivery of care. The 2024 Resilience Award aims to help scale existing hybrid care delivery models that:
  • Combine “brick” and “click” elements in innovative ways to facilitate the delivery of quality primary healthcare to low-income people.
  • Possibly offer a financing solution (eg savings and/or smart payment functionalities, microinsurance) to make healthcare more affordable; while ventures that integrate a financing solution are preferred, other ventures will also be considered.
  • Have linkages or potential to be embedded in government efforts and strategy as well as in existing public health systems or digital infrastructure.

Award Benefits

Award benefits include the following:

• Total grant of USD 700000 for the three finalists. This amount is divided among the winning initiative (which may receive up to USD 350000) and the two runners-up and is paid in instalments over two years.
• The finalist that wins the People’s Choice Award, determined by public online vote, will be invited to connect with potential investors at an event hosted by Sankalp Forum, one of the world’s largest platforms for impact enterprises.
• Tailored non-financial support for all three finalists, for instance:
  • Technical advice from Swiss Re employees and from staff of DCCC participating organisations (such as AXA, PharmAccess and Philips)
  • Training, advisory, data-gathering and/or analysis to improve business operations and strategy from LeFil Consulting representatives and others
• Potential eligibility for follow-up funding from the UBS Optimus Foundation
• Access to a network of like-minded peers with whom to share knowledge or experiences and from whom to learn on topics relevant to the initiative

Eligibility Criteria

• They encourage social enterprises that fall within the scope outlined above and that meet the following criteria to apply.
  • Mission and purpose Applicants must demonstrate high levels of social impact and ideally be able to measure it in a reliable manner (eg improved health indicators, reduced out-of pocket expenses).
  • Target group Low-income populations must constitute at least 30% of applicants’ customer base. Applicants should have a deep understanding of the specific circumstances of the people – women as well as men – they serve. Priority will be given to enterprises that are gender-inclusive, that is, strive to reduce gender inequalities.
  • Geography Applicants must operate in countries that are defined as low-income or lower middle-income by the World Bank.
  • Operating model Applicants must operate on a market basis. While the venture may depend on grant funding, it must demonstrate an ability to grow and scale through earned revenue.
  • Size Applicants must have been formally established by 2021, serve at least 20000 people and have the potential to reach at least 100000 people in the next two years.
  • Organisation Applicants must have a solid management team in which responsibilities are well defined and distributed. It should also have a diverse, well-structured workforce. Preference will be given to ventures with at least one female founder, or at least 30% women in the management team.
  • Legal compliance Applicants must comply with the legal framework of the country or countries in which they operate and be allowed to receive grant funding from a Swiss nongovernmental organisation such as the Swiss Re Foundation.

For more information, visit Swiss Re Foundation.