India FAQ

We operate in India as a branch office of a foreign organization, with the Permission of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) of 2017. We comply with auditing and disclosure procedures mandated by the Government of India and the U.S. government, and our tax returns and consolidated financial statements are available on our website here.

Our foundation is a charitable trust under the laws of the State of Washington, USA, and a tax-exempt private foundation as described in sections 501(c)(3) and 509(a) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.

Our foundation is a charitable trust under the laws of the State of Washington, USA, and a tax-exempt private foundation as described in sections 501(c)(3) and 509(a) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.

We disburse all grants directly from our main office in Seattle, Washington. As a U.S.-based organization, we are not subject to India’s Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) of 2010, which is enforced by the Ministry of Home Affairs; however, we confirm that our Indian grantees' FCRA registration is still active and they have the designated FCRA bank account before we release any payments to them.

We list all of our committed grants on our website here.

Our branch office in India operates with the permission of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) of 2017. This branch office does not disburse grants on behalf of the foundation, nor does it receive grants from the foundation’s Seattle office. The approval it has under FEMA allows it to bring foreign exchange into India to meet its direct operating expenses.

Our foundation complies with all auditing and disclosure procedures mandated by the Government of India and the U.S. government, and our tax returns and consolidated financial statements are available on our website here.

Indian NGOs that receive foreign funds from our foundation are regulated by the Ministry of Home Affairs under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) of 2010. Before we disburse funds to Indian grantees from our Seattle office, we confirm that they have the necessary FCRA approvals. We confirm that our Indian grantees' FCRA registration is still active and they have the designated FCRA bank account before we release any payments to them.

Our branch office in India does not receive any foreign contributions that are subject to FCRA.

Because our foundation is a U.S.-based organization and not an Indian grant recipient, we are not subject to the FCRA.

All of our work in India is aligned with the government’s objectives for improving the lives of its people, and we work closely with India’s central and state governments. Our other partners in this work include community groups, nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, the private sector, and development organizations. Our core work spans five sectors:

• Health
• Sanitation
• Agricultural development
• Gender equality
• Inclusive Financial Systems

With a particular focus on Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, we fund the development of sustainable, high-impact solutions that improve the quality and coverage of key services. We also work in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and Maharashtra to support programs in sanitation, agricultural development, and digital financial inclusion.

Our work in India began in 2003 with the launch of an HIV prevention initiative called Avahan. We have since expanded our efforts to include other key health and development issues, including maternal and child health, nutrition, vaccines and immunization, family planning, inclusive financial systems, sanitation, and communicable diseases.

All of our work in India supports the priorities of the central government and the governments of the states we work in. We offer them our expertise, global experience, and network of partnerships to support the development and dissemination of relevant, high-impact solutions. We also work closely with a range of private and public partner organizations across India to strengthen health systems.

We support governments’ priorities across our aligned areas of work, irrespective of political affiliations. We are compliant with local laws and offer governments our expertise, global experience, and network of partnerships to support issues related to the foundation’s charitable programs that are national and state government priorities.

The problems affecting the world’s poorest people are complex, and solving them requires the collaboration of governments, NGOs, academic institutions, and private companies. The private sector in particular has access to an array of scientific and medical innovations and technologies that can help save and improve lives. We enable and incentivize the private sector—including India’s highly innovative biotech sector, with its robust R&D capacity—to take on issues that they ordinarily wouldn’t invest in. Through these partnerships, we are placing bold bets on breakthroughs that have real potential to benefit the world’s poorest people.

We are committed to transparency and information sharing on our work across programs. To that end, all our grants are available in the public domain.

Our process begins with identifying where we can have the greatest impact in improving the lives of those most in need. Once we commit to an area of need, we define our major goals and identify a clear path to achieving them. We seek partners based on their ability to help achieve shared goals.

We apply a rigorous approach not only to funding our partners, but also to monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the work they carry out. We require all grantees to adhere to applicable laws.

Our grantees must commit to global access, which means that the knowledge and information generated through foundation funding will be promptly and broadly disseminated and any resulting products will be made available and accessible at an affordable price to the people who are most in need.

Our work is guided by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The foremost criterion of our progress across different programs are the parameters and indicators defined and established by the SDGs.

The endowment that funds the foundation is managed independently by a separate entity called the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. Foundation staff have no influence on trust investment decisions and no visibility into the trust’s investment strategies or holdings other than what is publicly available via required public disclosures (such as the foundation’s annual tax return, Form 990).

Our work is driven by the belief that all lives have equal value. Disease and malnutrition are among the fundamental drivers of global inequities that keep people from reaching their fullest potential.

We fund clinical research, including clinical trials, to evaluate safe, effective and less expensive ways to diagnose and prevent critical diseases that disproportionately affect low-income people in developing countries.

The Gates Foundation requires its grantees to adhere to all applicable ethical, legal, regulatory, and safety requirements including applicable international, national, local, and institutional standards. Any human subjects research must adhere to current Good Clinical Practice as defined by the International Council on Harmonisation (or local regulations if more stringent).

In the area of nutrition, we focus in particular on maternal, infant, and young child nutrition (MIYCN) interventions at the state level—primarily in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. We aim to provide technical support for MIYCN interventions and food fortification at the national level, particularly in other high-burden states where best practices and interventions can be implemented and scaled up. Our nutrition work involves partnerships at the national and state levels to improve maternal nutrition and promote early and exclusive breastfeeding, complementary feeding, micronutrient supplementation, food fortification, and treatment of children with severe malnutrition.

Vaccines are among the best investments the world can make to give every child a healthy start in life and build stronger communities and economies. Over the past several decades, vaccines have been responsible for the eradication of smallpox and dramatic reductions in the incidence of diseases including polio, meningitis, and measles—saving millions of lives every year. But despite the life-saving potential of vaccines, too many children—one in seven worldwide—do not have access to them.

Every year in India, half a million children die due to vaccine-preventable diseases. Nearly 9 million more remain at risk because they are either unimmunized or partially immunized against vaccine-preventable diseases. In addition to supporting ministries at the central and state levels to improve coverage of routine immunization and provide immunization during outbreaks, we work with a range of partners in new vaccine development and introduction. We also contribute to the growth of the vaccine industry in India by augmenting the manufacturing capacity of domestic producers, supporting clinical trials, and enabling global technology transfer.

We do not manufacture or sell vaccines. In partnership with other global health organizations and governments around the world, we support NGOs and pharmaceutical and biotech firms with grants that enable them to pursue research and development that results in lower-cost, safer, and more effective drugs and vaccines. These drugs and vaccines save millions of lives every year, and further innovation will save millions more. Our partnerships with the private sector include research into vaccines for diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV, and malaria, which are major causes of death in the world’s poorest communities.

Diarrheal diseases are the most common cause of childhood illness and the second-leading infectious killer of children under age 5 five worldwide, with more than 1,400 deaths every day. About 90 percent of childhood deaths from diarrheal disease occur in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where access to safe water, sanitation, and urgent medical care can be limited.

Investing in better sanitation can yield significant economic and social benefits in India by reducing the incidence of infectious diseases and preventing disability and early death. Better sanitation can also reduce health care costs, increase productivity, and lead to better educational outcomes.

We are committed to working with the Indian government, multilateral organizations, community-based organizations, and the private sector to successfully implement a national urban sanitation program that is equitable and serves the needs of poor residents and women in particular. This work includes the development of new sanitation technologies and operating models as well as markets and regulatory frameworks for the widespread adoption of products and services that can safely capture, transport, and treat human waste.

In supporting India’s vision of digital financial inclusion, we share ideas with the government and other partners and provide technical assistance, contextual research, monitoring and evaluation, and best practices from within and outside India on how to implement sustainable digital infrastructure and an enabling environment.

We support efforts by the Indian government to digitize government payments to poor households and encourage new digital banking models. We also work with private-sector providers to design digital financial products that meet the needs of poor households. Our work primarily seeks to address market failures that restrict access to and the use of such products by poor and rural communities and women.

While gender equity has always been at the heart of our priorities—for example, in our family planning, health, and nutrition programs—our explicit gender focus across the entire foundation is new. We have committed to an intentional focus on addressing barriers that women face simply because of their gender and to support women’s economic empowerment.

India is one of the four priority countries for our gender equality investments. The others are Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

We support the development and dissemination of tools and innovations that help poor farmers boost their production and provide more nutritious food for their families and communities. We work with the public sector, private companies, and NGOs to learn from smallholder farmers about their needs and invest in improving the yields of crops that they depend on (including rice, wheat, and legumes) so they can better feed their families, strengthen their local economy, and adapt to the effects of a changing climate. 

None of our grants to India are in genetically modified crops.

The HPV demonstration study conducted by PATH with technical support from ICMR, used vaccines that were already licensed in India. This study was focused on operational considerations relevant to vaccine introduction. Prior to the study, these vaccines were already licensed by the Drugs Controller General of India (DGCI) and therefore established to be safe and efficacious.

The HPV demonstration study is being reviewed by the Honourable Supreme Court of India and we hope that the facts of the case are ascertained at the earliest.