Guwahati: Amid growing policy emphasis on leveraging CSR for decentralised development, Smile Foundation is positioning Assam as a national pilot for convergence-based service delivery—linking corporate funding with state-run education, healthcare, and skilling infrastructure. The foundation is embedding its operational frameworks into Assam’s government systems, aiming to institutionalise outcome-linked public-private models that could be scaled across other climate-vulnerable states like Odisha and Bihar.
“Assam offers a complex but structured ecosystem where policy windows and private capital can intersect. We are using this state to pilot scalable templates for outcome-driven social development,” said Puneet Bali, Director – Healthcare, Smile Foundation, in a recent interview with Business North East (BNE), who is leading the foundation’s expansion roadmap in the region.
Smile Foundation’s multi-sector approach includes expanding its healthcare delivery through mobile medical units (MMUS), linking them with state-run Primary Health Centres (PHCS), ICDS centres, and school health schemes. The foundation currently operates 13 MMUS across Northeast India, of which six are in Assam. Plans are underway to transform these into digital healthcare data nodes contributing to health informatics and referral networks.
In the education sector, the organisation is extending its school transformation programme to underserved districts with a focus on foundational learning, retention, and access to government support schemes. Simultaneously, Smile Foundation will scale its Mission Swabhiman programme—focused on menstrual hygiene, maternal nutrition, and reproductive health—targeting adolescent girls and mothers in char and flood-prone belts such as Morigaon, Barpeta, and Dhemaji.
On the livelihoods front, Smile Foundation is aligning with the Skill India Mission and Assam’s state skilling roadmap to deliver sector-specific training to youth in logistics, agro-processing, and primary healthcare. It is also in discussions with Central PSUS and private sector companies with an operational footprint in Assam to co-fund fixed-location skill centres under their mandatory CSR allocations.
Over the past two years, the organisation has reached over five lakh individuals in the Northeast through its healthcare, education, and awareness verticals, with Assam accounting for nearly 60% of the total outreach. “In Assam, we are moving from relief to design. This is not about parallel systems, but about building institutional linkages between CSR funders, line departments, and community-based monitoring,” Bali told BNE.
Smile Foundation’s internal models project Assam’s developmental conditions as an analogue for states like Bihar and Odisha, which face similar vulnerabilities from climate variability and low baseline indicators in maternal health, school dropout rates, and informal unemployment. Assam’s legislative and administrative readiness to integrate private development funding into public delivery frameworks was a key factor behind Smile Foundation’s deeper push into the state.
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Talks are ongoing with district-level officials to deploy health, skilling, and school-level interventions in collaboration with existing government schemes, using a cost-sharing approach based on measurable outcomes. The foundation is also evaluating the deployment of telemedicine, nutritional surveillance, and digital skilling through hybrid physical-digital centres in select districts.
“State government departments are increasingly open to co-owned, outcome-linked delivery models. The challenge is to institutionalise these through operational SOPS, not just MoUs. Assam is showing early signs of that transition,” Bali said.
Smile Foundation’s expansion in Assam is part of a broader shift among CSR-backed non-profits in India. The focus is moving from short-term outreach to infrastructure-based, metrics-aligned development that can plug into government systems. Assam, with its policy headroom and demographic indicators, is being positioned as a test bed for such a model.
“The Northeast has always been part of the development narrative, but often without continuity or alignment. We are working to embed continuity through structures, not just presence,” Bali added.
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The foundation’s future investments in Assam are expected to include a mix of mobile and fixed infrastructure, with pilots for integrated dashboards that track learning, health, and income indicators district-wise. If successful, the model may be replicated in other states with similar socio-geographic challenges, enabling a standardised, CSR-driven institutional pathway for rural development. With the state positioned as a policy lab for rural development aligned to public schemes, the foundation’s institutional approach reflects a larger transition underway in India’s development financing landscape, where CSR funds are being engineered into semi-public capital.
“Assam allows us to embed funding within state-led infrastructure, creating a replicable cost-sharing framework for other climate-sensitive states,” Bali said. If the Assam blueprint holds, Smile’s convergence-based strategy could become a reference point for CSR-linked delivery mechanisms nationwide, especially in geographies where public capacity needs catalytic private reinforcement.
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