D-Prize exists to seed new ventures that are scaling the distribution of evidence-based poverty interventions. They believe that simply distributing the existing, evidence-based, and rigorously studied products and services that are known to work in low resource settings can lead to alleviating the impact of poverty.
The leverage point? Local Leaders. D-Prize believes there are many talented people who could figure out how to distribute existing solutions to communities in need. But today far too few of those leaders have resources to even get started.
The team at D-Prize work to identify high-impact health, energy, education, and other solutions that have large delivery gaps. They then give startup funding to entrepreneurs that design new organisations that are solely focused on distributing these at scale.
A core to D-Prize’s work is inclusive support. Last year, 100% of the founders they seed are local to a low or lower-middle-income country (with 38% being women-led). All but a few had raised less than $5,000 US prior to D-Prize support.
Since 2013, D-Prize has seeded over 250 distribution ventures at the earliest stage. Ongoingly, D-Prize launches 35-40 new distribution ventures a year, all of which seek to serve 100,000 people within their first 5 years. The top 10% of their ventures are on track to reach this figure, and their distribution network has already delivered proven interventions to more than 8.6 million people in need.