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India has emerged as a thriving hub for blended finance over the last decade, with multiple streams of capital coming together to move the needle on some of the country’s most deeply entrenched development issues. Education, specifically foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN), is one such area. The pandemic-induced school closures that India witnessed impacted learning and children’s FLN skills. Going ‘mission mode’ to improve FLN outcomes, the Government of India launched the landmark NIPUN Bharat Mission to strengthen FLN across India.

An initiative such as this requires sustainability and scale – and adoption and replication of it require intent, expertise, and additional resources from different types of capital. We at the Reliance Foundation and the British Asian Trust, along with a consortium of mission-aligned organisations, recognised that collaborative action from the private sector and civil society could serve as an ‘impact multiplier’ to bolster the government’s FLN goals. Together, we designed and launched LiftEd to strengthen the government’s mission so every child in India gains FLN skills – the cornerstone that learning journeys are built on.

LiftEd is structured and delivered on the rigorous principles of outcome-based financing and benefits from the combined experience and knowledge of a wide range of private sector, philanthropic, and civil society partners. This gives us two advantages: One, we have outcome sustainability, and two, we are building on efforts where pools of resources can continue for financing sustainability.

A seat for every kind of capital at the table

Together with Reliance Foundation and the British Asian Trust, LiftEd is anchored by founding partners such as Atlassian Foundation, Bridges Outcomes Partnerships, the Maitri Trust, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Standard Chartered Bank, UBS Optimus Foundation, and USAID. These organisations bring diverse expertise and capital pools to LiftEd, ensuring that the project is well-resourced at every stage of its lifecycle, based on the kind of capital it requires.

The USD 20 million from partners spanning investors, philanthropic foundations, CSR organisations, and bilateral agencies, all with their own strategies, risk appetites, compliance requirements, and timelines, is deployed for a common goal – to improve FLN for 4 million children across India over 5 years.

The initiative operates through a dual approach with a Development Impact Bond (DIB) to improve in-school learning outcomes and an EdTech Accelerator to improve at-home learning outcomes. Both instruments have different capital needs. Blending of capital allows the initiative to match the type of financing to a suitable need in the project, be it upfront working capital for implementation, flexible funds needed for innovation, repayments and rewards for risk-taking, technical assistance, monitoring and evaluation, and so on, while still working within regulatory and funder requirements around each capital type.

Blended finance also offers the opportunity for democratisation of funding. For example, CSR funds need to work within the ambit of annual utilisation required by the regulation. Under LiftEd’s DIB, CSR funds are used as outcome funding, and we ensure compliance with these rules through the DIB’s financial design which has supplementary types of outcome funds that do not fall within the purview of CSR regulation and can be more flexible in spending and carry forward. CSR funding also supported a grant-funded ‘learning year’ that preceded the DIB and played a key role in informing the impact bond’s implementation and monitoring and evaluation design.

Designing LiftEd’s financial model innovatively by blending multiple and varied sources of funds enabled us to consider the purpose and compliance requirements of different types of capital and match these to programmatic needs, ultimately ensuring a fit-for-purpose design to achieve the FLN outcomes.

Meaningful collaboration lies beyond the chequebooks

While blending capital has yielded benefits, blending competencies and capabilities have multiplied the value of these benefits manifold. Each of LiftEd’s founding partners brings to the table unique perspectives, experience, skills, and insights, allowing the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts and achieve more than what we would be able to individually.

To illustrate, Reliance Foundation has a strong track record and ambitious education commitments across the spectrum of early childhood education to quality higher education. The aim is to support the government’s mission and vision for more synergetic impact at scale. As we combine this with our focus on research and data, we can shape the evaluation, learning, and research agenda for LiftEd. Additionally, with our keen understanding of the excellent leverage of technology and its adoption in India, we believe we can bring the best of both education and technology to our EdTech work.

Similarly, the British Asian Trust brings deep learnings from other outcomes-based financing programmes in India – namely the Quality Education India DIB and the Skill Impact Bond. We are committed to doing what it takes to bring the right partners together to create meaningful impact. This, paired with our in-depth understanding of how to innovatively design, build consensus, and successfully run multi stakeholder partnerships with a razor-sharp focus on outcomes hold us in good stead for LiftEd, particularly when it comes to convening diverse partners, managing governance, and mobilising resources.

Beyond individual missions and experiences, there still needs to be a compelling reason drawing us together. What, for instance, would be the attraction for us to be catalysts or facilitators in this social purpose? We believe that by bringing experience, vision, commitment, and capital, we attract additional stakeholders who are not just invested in the issue and the process but also contribute additional investments. The credibility of blended finance builds confidence among other investors to create a ripple effect and generate greater impact on social outcomes. The additionality of resources also enhances longer-term outcomes, ensuring that the development we trigger together can sustain momentum.

In the rest of the consortium, we have found extremely supportive partners across the education, outcome-based financing, and philanthropic ecosystems. For example, Bridges Outcomes Partnerships brings expertise and cross-learnings from its global outcomes-based financing portfolio. The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Maitri Trust, Atlassian Foundation, and Standard Chartered bring experience in supporting large-scale education programmes with a focus on evidence-backed models and systems change. UBS Optimus Foundation brings acumen in terms of identifying and scaling innovative models and USAID brings technical expertise and assistance that critically supports development programmes. As design and technical partners, the Central Square Foundation brings strong FLN expertise and Dalberg Advisors brings experience in designing and structuring outcomes-based financing programmes in education.

All this, paired with the deep on-ground expertise of our education partners sets LiftEd apart. The diversity of perspectives, experiences, and discussions has fostered shared learning, new ways of approaching the challenge at hand, and consequently, deep solutions to deliver sharper, more focused FLN outcomes.

Our shared learnings continually feed back into LiftEd, strengthening the programme. We believe that a stronger India also means a stronger world and we hope that the experiences and insights we gather from LiftEd can help inform education investments across the globe.

Trust, mission alignment, and strong governance scaffold the collaboration to maintain accountability for outcomes

The partnerships that form the core basis of LiftEd were alliances forged in the face of school closures left in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. This coalition of mission-driven organisations came together with a strong desire to stem the tide of learning loss in the country. This common goal attracted the time, attention, and problem-solving skills of the country’s innovators in the FLN ecosystem. A creative and collaborative design process cemented the foundation for trust within the consortium. This foundation was strengthened and formalised with each partner committing to the principles agreed upon at the design stage through legal contracts and governance mechanisms.

While collectives and collaborations are not uncommon in India, what makes LiftEd unique is that this is not a loose coalition of interested partners, but a structured relationship between the partners shepherded by defined governance, delineated roles and responsibilities, and contractual agreements, all directed towards a single-minded aim of maximum impact on FLN in India. Our shared mission has served as our north star and keeping it at the heart of every decision and action has ensured that each of LiftEd’s 26 partners consistently brings their best ideas, resources, and intentions to the initiative.

Ultimately, capital and competencies are just the foundation. The transformational impact for four million children is a start. Inclusive and equitable quality education where no child is left behind is the real journey we would like to travel on, together.