Rural tech startups come together make Indian villages COVID-19 resilient

Rural tech startups Frontier Markets, HESA, and 1Bridge have announced the formation of a rural access coalition to address the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic in the rural sector.

Combining over 30 years of experience in rural India, the coalition aims to raise $8mn to ensure employment, awareness, and accessibility to 1 million rural households in 6,000 villages across 4 states in India.

The mission of the coalition is to support rural families to become Covid resilient while contributing to job creation and economic resilience in rural India.

Commenting on the initiative, Ajaita Shah Founder and CEO of Frontier Markets said “The Rural Access Coalition is the first of its kind. We are proud to be driving this initiative, and honored to work alongside such great founders; it will help overcome the grass-root level challenges in rural India directly, and quickly.”

Madan Padaki, Founder & CEO of, 1Bridge expressed, “Access, Choice, and Convenience have always been a challenge for rural consumers across products & services and 1Bridge has been systematically addressing these challenges through its village commerce network of entrepreneurs. With the onslaught of the pandemic, it is now critical to solving these from a healthcare perspective.

With our strong network of over 7000 Hesaathis across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, we have been able to provide physical, digital and social connectivity to rural communities and bridge the urban-rural gap in India. We look forward to making rural communities become Covid resilient with this coalition.” elucidated Vamsi Udayagiri, Co-Founder and CEO Hesa.