Our Journey
Fortify Health began in 2017 as a question: How can we fill a gap to cost effectively improve public health at scale? In searching for the answer to this question, Fortify Health’s founders looked at the burden of anaemia globally and the evidence around programmes that tackle anaemia. We were particularly struck not only by the depth of the anaemia issue in India, but also by the evidence, scalability and cost-effectiveness of one particular solution to address anaemia: wheat flour fortification. Thanks to existing, rigorous evidence on fortification and many conversations with experts in the nutrition field, we decided that wheat flour fortification in India was a clear, important starting point as the answer to our initial question.
Founding support came from Charity Science (now Charity Entrepreneurship), with mentorship from co-founder Joey Savoie, who was especially supportive in our earliest years. 
In 2018 Fortify Health secured its first Incubation Grant of $300,000 from GiveWell and hired a dedicated team in India. We set up our two flagship programmes to enable wheat flour fortification at-scale. Each of our flagship programmes focused, and still focuses, on a different public channel: a) supporting mills to fortify wheat flour for the open market, and b) collaborating with state governments and quasi-governmental organisations to fortify the wheat flour they provide to their beneficiaries. We initially set up our programmes in Maharashtra and West Bengal and then received a follow-up grant from GiveWell of ~$1 million in 2019, allowing us to expand our programmes to Madhya Pradesh. Between 2018 and 2021, in spite of challenges posed by the pandemic, we were able to demonstrate proof of concept of our programmes.
In December 2021, Fortify Health received an ~$8.2 million grant from GiveWell to scale our flagship programmes over a three-year period. This phase focused on the foundations: a robust leadership team, expansion to new regions, and automated systems to support rapid growth. We also signed several implementation and academic partnerships, including with IIT Delhi and CFTRI, to generate evidence on food fortification at scale.
2025 was a defining year. Our open-market programme more than doubled in reach, from under 7 million beneficiaries at the start of the year to over 13 million by December. We launched the first comprehensive White Paper on wheat flour fortification in India, convened a national, multi-stakeholder dialogue with CFTRI in November, and an independent IDinsight study validated that consumers of our partners' fortified flour receive enough iron for meaningful health benefits.
The year also brought significant external recognition of our work:
Today, Fortify Health works with over 290 mill partners across 16 states, with our partners' fortified atta reaching approximately 20 million people every month. You can see live numbers on our real-time dashboard. 2026 has already brought further support from two of the most rigorous funders in effective giving:
Our focus now turns to true scale. The next chapter of our work centres on deeper engagement with government to fortify the wheat flour distributed through schemes such as the Public Distribution System and PM POSHAN, which already reach over 400 million people every day.
By 2030, we expect to fortify 40% of India's packaged wheat flour, reach over 64 million people directly, and avert more than 125,000 years lived with anaemia annually. Beyond that, our ambition is to reach all 600 million people in India who regularly consume wheat flour, and to help make iron deficiency anaemia a problem of the past. |
Founding SupportFortify Health’s founding team received initial funding and mentoring from Charity Science (now Charity Entrepreneurship), with the aim to set up an iron and folic acid fortification initiative that may eventually meet the highest standards of cost-effectiveness, and deliver significant impact with limited resources. Joey Savoie, Co-founder and Director of Strategy at Charity Entrepreneurship, was especially supportive of Fortify Health’s work in these early years.
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