Together for Her

Problem: India has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. However, if less than 40% of Indian women visit more than 4 antenatal care appointments (due to a lack in knowledge, behaviour, access or affordability) it is hard to improve the state of maternal healthcare. Moreover, there is no trustworthy source to find quality hospitals. Consequently, diseases such as anaemia, hypertension or gestational diabetes are never diagnosed before delivery or treated wrongly at the time of birth.

Solution: The main causes of preventable maternal mortality & morbidity can be detected in the 9 months before pregnancy or immediately after delivery, but women do not visit their ANC & PNC appointments. By eliminating the barriers to access maternal healthcare (knowledge, behavioural, access & affordability) through tech-enabled knowledge provision & bundled services from high quality providers, we believe that we can diagnose & treat MH challenges early enough, resulting in reduced maternal mortality & morbidity.

Target Group: Every year there are 12 million pregnancies in the private sector in India. These 12 million women, & specifically the women in SEC B and C (monthly household income between 12K to 40K INR) living in urban sectors are the initial target population for Together for Her's bundled services. The women in this target population visit or want to visit private healthcare institutions and aspire to good care quality at affordable budgets. The women that they are addressing also have access to at least 1 smartphone in their household, either owned by themselves or their husband.

TfH also targets pregnant women in the SEC D & E population with awareness programs on MH and QoC. These women visit public health facilities, but still lack awareness & advocacy to demand full antenatal care. A planned expansion in 2020 is to target SEC A, where despite affordability not being a barrier, access to personalised patient-centric healthcare is still limited. This expansion is important from a sustainability point of view.

---