Building on the learnings from the research “Scaling up inclusive healthcare in low- and middle- income countries”, Sanofi’s Global Health Unit launched in 2022 the Sanofi Impact Fund to support impact driven ventures improving access to primary healthcare (e.g., ., access to affordable quality drugs and prevention, diagnostic, follow-up services) for vulnerable patients in 40 high-need countries. Over the past 3 years, the Fund invested over $10m into 8 ventures across South-East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Involved since the inception, Hystra has been supporting Sanofi’s Impact Fund team across key critical areas:

• Shaping the investment strategy and refining criteria to align impact with business potential

• Building a robust pipeline of +200 ventures and facilitating dealmaking where needed

• Enhancing value for investees, by providing in-person and remote technical assistance on operational performance. Hystra provided support to 5 Sanofi’s investees, with high levels of satisfaction (ranked 8 out of 10 and above) from the management teams.

• Formalizing learnings to continuously improve the Fund’s operations and impact

For example, the Sanofi Impact Fund team and Hystra have worked closely with tech-enabled wholesalers in LMICs as a lever to improve access to affordable and quality medicine as well as to professionalize pharmacies at the last-mile. This collaboration provided deep insights intro what drives wholesalers’ sustainable success and impact. These insights have been codified into a comprehensive framework -  “the journey of tech-enabled wholesalers" - designed to help ventures identify and prioritize their short-, medium-, and long-term development goals. This framework has already been put in practice by two investees, PillTech’s and Dawa Mkononi’s senior management teams in Cambodia and Tanzania respectively. This helped them clearly define their main development priorities, and in particular focus efforts on key pitfalls for their maturity, namely improving their customer segmentation and building their sales team capabilities before further developing their technology or expanding in new geographies.