Inclusive Markets LAB

We are currently exploring the question - how/which innovation can improve healthcare and skilling at the grassroots, especially for those who are economically disadvantaged, socially underrepresented, and historically stigmatised, with a special focus on ethical and inclusive digitisation of data, so that it can power a new generation of accessible AI-assisted health and education services.

The Inclusive Markets Lab was established in 2019 at IIM Bangalore and moved to UCL in 2025. The lab is dedicated to studying the development of inclusive markets and innovations.

Project AIU brief.pdf

Project Dant AIU - AIIMS-IITD-UCL Trilateral Med-tech Grant

AIIMS, IITD, UCL trilateral Med-Tech Grant was awarded to DantAIU for integrating health outreach programmes into national health ecosystems through affordable, inclusive and universal (AIU) image-based digitisation of paper records. Project is led by Pratap Kumar (UCL, Digital Health Policy), Harsh Priya (AIIMS, Public Health Dentistry), Prateek Raj (UCL) and Subodh Sharma (IITD, Computer Science). Building on the proven PaperEMR platform, this two year project will digitise paper-based health records from health outreach settings by integrating low-cost and less resource-intensive technologies to enable real-time, low-effort, multilingual digitisation of health records. The TRL 9 solution will integrate paper health data to India’s Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), and enable AI-assisted healthcare—for underserved populations especially in dental and oral health as part of India’s National Oral Health Programme (NOHP) - offering a replicable model for global health systems that are reliant on paper. (14 Jul 2025)

Atypical Testing.pdf

Atypical testing

“Outliers” are often ignored as “anecdotes” in research as well as decision making, ironically in the name of “rigour”. But they are often the first to detect fringe disruptions - from tribal communities near mines, to families near dumping grounds, to victims of predatory lending, misinformation, or climatic extremes. Presented at 7th BRICS Symposium at Fudan University (27 June 2025).

Indian missions ppt ICA manipal.pdf

Role ambiguity and kumbh mela

Based on a grant to study the 2019 Kumbh Mela held at Prayagraj, by the Government of Uttar Pradesh, Jan-May 2019 (to G Ramesh, Ritu Kumar and Prateek Raj), this solo-authored study develops a grounded model that highlights the importance of role ambiguity and slack in the success of large-scale missions like the Kumbh Mela 2019. While such role ambiguity is generally considered in the literature to be unsuitable for routine tasks, it becomes highly valuable in a highly fluid setting like the Kumbh. However, when the information ecosystem is compromised or all stakeholders are not considered, the same role ambiguity can lead to catastrophic failures at such sites (2025). The study, contributing to the literature on role ambiguity, mission-based management, and the governance of meta-organisations, has been presented at UCL (June 2024), IIT Kanpur (January 2025), and the International Communication Association Conference, Manipal (June 2025).

BOOK Launch: Atypical

New book Atypical: Five Strategy Rules for a New World by Prateek Raj released today by Westland Business. Based on Raj’s MBA elective Strategic Stewardship, it explores 5 rules that bring atypical voices to the center. Read more:

Book: Atypical (17 February, 2025)
Editorial: Embracing the atypicals to solve challenges of the 21st century, Journal of Indian Business Research, 2025

STIGLER WORKING PAPER ON ELITE MARRIAGEs

In a new working paper Francis Kim and Prateek Raj and study how historical marriage alliances in South Korea among elites change with institutional change. Read more: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/-/media/research/stigler/pdfs/workingpapers/354kim2020prateekworking20paper2025115pdf.pdf (31 January, 2025)

ABDC Award for Innovation and Excellence

We are so thrilled that ABDC Award for Innovation and Excellence in Research has been awarded to Hari Bapuji, Sneha Crisphal and a team of researchers across the world, for research advancing understanding of the link between inequality and caste. Read more: https://www.iimb.ac.in/prof-prateek-raj-won-2024-abdc-award-scholarly-research (4 December, 2024)

The Indian carpet survey.pdf

UK-India Trade Grant

IIMB & King’s College London, in collaboration with FICCI, hosted the conference ‘UK-India Trade: Small Firms and Global Ambitions’ in New Delhi unveiling results from a three-year collaborative research project. Read more:.www.iimb.ac.in/node/13415 (18 September, 2024). Report was the culmination of the awarded grant to study the Enablers and Obstacles for UK-India Trade: Banks and Diasporas, by the UK's Econonomic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) for their call to study the future of UK-India trade. 21 Oct 2020 (to Kamini Gupta and Sunil Kumar based at King’s College London, and Prateek Raj at IIM Bangalore)

PLOS PAPER ON INSTITUTIONAL STIGMA

A new paper by Hari Bapuji, Prateek Raj, and Thomas Roulet, published in PLOS One finds Dalit business owners experience an income gap of around 16% compared to others. Surprisingly, this gap increases at higher levels of social capital. Read the paper here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0307660 (8 August, 2024)

Media coverage

“Caste Price: Editorial on social capital doing little to enhance income of Dalit business owners” (editorial) - The Telegraph, Aug 16, 2024
“Impact of institutional stigma on Dalit business owners’ earning capacity” (feature) – The Hindu, Aug 14, 2024
“Dalit business owners experience income gap of 16%” (paper coverage), Various newspapers, August 2024
- Hindu, Indian Express (1, 2), News Minute, New Indian Express, Telegraph India, Times of India, The Wire

The Telegraph

The Telegraph (Editorial)

Indian Express

The Hindu

FORBES Article on JOB CREATION

“To create good, stable jobs we must focus on inclusive growth; prioritize extensive skill development” writes Prof. Prateek Raj for Forbes India. Read more: https://www.forbesindia.com/article/iim-bangalore/a-blueprint-for-creating-good-jobs-in-india/93520/1 (2 July, 2024)

INDIAN EXPRESS Article on MARRIAGE EQUALITY

The fight for queer equality won’t be championed solely by well-intentioned allies advocating for us. It necessitates a ground-up approach, urging more of us to assert our presence and voice Prateek Raj writes. Read more: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/sc-marriage-equality-judgment-8992557/ (20 October, 2023)

TIMEs OF INDIA INTERVIEW ON HATE SPEECH

Prateek Raj talks about a letter he and other academics wrote on their worries about hate affecting India's economic growth. He also explains the long history behind hate speech creating a fertile ground for disaster and why he is still hopeful about India. Read more: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/podcasts/the-times-of-india-podcast/how-hate-can-hurt-indias-economic-dreams/toipodcast/102992737.cms (24 August 2023)

Karnataka@100_Vision_Document.pdf

CII report on Karnatka @ 2047

IIMB with CII launched a vision document for Karnataka @ 100, led by Prateek Raj, inviting stakeholders to build an innovative green ecosystem in Karnataka, that shall put the state at the frontier of the global economy. (11 July, 2023)

evolutionbizmarkets-_raj-4.pdf

MOOC ON Business-economic history and hindi heartland

An exhaustive course on the evolution of business and markets released as part of Prateek Raj's PhD and MOOC course on the same topic covers the mechanics of evolution of free and inclusive economies, with a special policy note on the path of Uttar Pradesh and the Hindi heartland to a trillion dollar economy. The project's focus on Uttar Pradesh emerged out of a grant to study the 2019 Kumbh Mela held at Prayagraj, by the Government of Uttar Pradesh, Jan-May 2019 (12 October 2022)

UPPlan_slide2.pdf

Study on edX

Study on Swayam

Strategic Stewardship (notes).pdf

Launch of strategy stewardship

Launched the MBA elective strategic stewardship at IIM Bangalore, focusing on a design thinking approach to non-market strategy (September 2022), with a Forbes article introducing the core ideas of the course.

Launch of project chhaav

A rural health initative - Project Chhaav - led by the IIMA and IIMB volunteers emerged during the peak of the COVID-19 (May 2021 onwards) period to distribute health kits to rural health workers, reaching >120,000 workers by 2022.

Promarket ARTICLE ON how twitter weakened india's public health

A new article by Prateek Raj in ProMarket reflects on how India’s Covid-19 crisis is a reminder that Indian democracy is also in a crisis, partly due to an information ecosystem where facts and criticism are suppressed, hateful voices are amplified, and public conversation steers away from vital issues like health care. (7 May, 2021) Read more: https://www.promarket.org/2021/05/07/twitter-india-information-ecosystem-covid-19/

ssirindiacovid2021.pdf

SSIR ARTICLE ON MANAGING Public HEALTH CRISES

A new article by IIMB faculty Haritha Saranga and Prateek Raj in the Stanford Social Innovation Review calls for the need for collaboration between different organizational forms (firms, NGOs, and government) to manage a COVID-19 type large scale public crisis. (Summer, 2021) Read more: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/how_to_manage_large_scale_public_crises

Media---Report (1).pdf

STIGLER CENTER REPORT ON JOURNALISM

A new report co-authored by Prateek Raj along with a committee of experts proposed ways in which journalism can be protected in the age of digital platforms (1 July, 2019) Read more: https://research.chicagobooth.edu/-/media/research/stigler/pdfs/media---report.pdf?la=en&hash=B9C175BCDBF29606704740B23D290CD447D1F3BA&fbclid=IwAR36wZLOYjZsUI8DpHxu79ExDGT69er6DRTUOZZ64m1-PeLHQFtofSFsS_I

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