ARMMAN works towards ensuring safe pregnancies, healthy babies, and thriving young families.
Investee | ARMMAN, founded 2008 |
Location | Pan-India operations with HQ in Mumbai, India |
Sector | Healthcare |
Funding start | July 2020 |
Funding type | Grant |
Website | https://armman.org/ |
Although India has improved its Maternal and Child Health (MNCH) indicators over the past decade, a lot still needs to be done to achieve the SDGs. On average, there are ~900,000 children under 5 deaths and ~30,000 maternal deaths every year in India. The majority of these deaths are due to preventable or treatable causes. Poor performance of maternal and child health indicators can also be attributed to socio-economic factors such as a patriarchal and superstitious society with women often not being the primary decision-makers for their own or their baby’s health.
Last-mile government Community Health Workers (CHWs, ASHA workers) are the first point of contact within the public healthcare system in India. However, they are usually over-burdened, under-supported and ill-equipped, resulting in poor quality of care.
There lies a huge potential for improving maternal and child health outcomes through preventive care, improved access to accurate health information and better support for government CHWs (ASHA workers) in India.
Founded in 2008, ARMMAN works towards ensuring safe pregnancies, healthy babies, and thriving young families. The organization works in low-income (rural and urban) communities where:
In 2019, ARMMAN entered into a collaboration with India’s Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) as its implementation partner for two of its flagship mHealth programs (Kilkari and Mobile Academy) to improve maternal and child health outcomes. Kilkari is the largest maternal and child mHealth program in the world. Since inception, programs implemented by ARMMAN have reached ~18m pregnant women and their families and trained ~160,000 Community Health Workers (CHWs) in India.
The organization uses a ‘tech plus touch’ model that leverages high mobile phone penetration and existing health infrastructure to deploy tech-enabled, cost-effective, evidence-based and highly scalable mHealth solutions to:
ARMMAN’s impact has been validated through multiple research studies including a randomized controlled trial; select KPI’s showcasing proven program adherence & effectiveness:
SDG 3.1, 3.2: Focus on maternal and child health to reduce maternal, infant, neonatal mortality
SDG 3.c: Increase the recruitment, development, training, and retention of the health workforce
Indicator | 2020 | 2021 |
# of additional women enrolled (mMitra + Kilkari) | 3'192'685 | 4'798'276 |
# of additional CHWs trained for Mobile Academy | 1'409 | 29'514 |
By investing in ARMMAN, we align with and contribute two of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.