Market Shapers with Inder Singh

Inder Singh
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Welcome to Market Shapers — a podcast about harnessing capitalism for good, hosted by Inder Singh, a founder, CEO, and pioneer of the practice of “market shaping.” On this show, Inder sits down with leaders, innovators, and behind-the-scenes dealmakers who’ve changed the way markets work, often in ways most people never see. They’ll unpack how they did it, what they learned, and how those lessons can help tackle the big challenges ahead. Follow Market Shapers on LinkedIn and Instagram @marketshaperspod.

  1. Sep 29

    One More Look at the CHAI Playbook & Why It Matters Today

    Over the course of the season, we’ve spoken with a number of guests who led CHAI’s work to reduce prices and shape markets for drugs, diagnostics, and other essential health products. They’ve given us a behind-the-scenes look at how CHAI approached this work—and how that approach evolved over two decades. In this episode, host Inder Singh brings those lessons together and breaks down the CHAI playbook. He walks through the approach CHAI used to dramatically lower the price of lifesaving medicines, from shuttle diplomacy to volume guarantees. Along the way, he digs into what really made the approach work, how it evolved over time, and why some of its earliest lessons may be especially relevant today. The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM. Episode Quotes:How CHAI’s turned leverage into lower sustainable price 22:01: So, let's pull this all together. CHAI was pursuing a very specific goal. The products largely existed. The job was to make them accessible through reliable supply at the lowest sustainable price. The overall sequence was simple to say but hard to do. Build buying power. Align the buyers around the same products. Use market intelligence to give the suppliers a credible view of demand. And then remove the obstacles keeping the market from working better. CHAI's three-part method was how it did that last part. Understand what the supplier's unit costs could become and negotiate from there. Remove costs and risks, both inside the factory and across the broader system. And use shuttle diplomacy to coordinate the buyers, suppliers, regulators, funders, and others whose decision determined what was possible. The sequence created leverage and credibility. The three-part method turned that leverage into lower sustainable price. Now, when it worked, suppliers would earn a reasonable return on much, much larger volumes. Buyers could treat far more people with the same budget, and patients gained access to products that had previously been out of reach. It was never simply about negotiating a discount or hammering suppliers on their margins. It was about changing the conditions that determined the price. The price of uncertainty 15:32: If a tender is complicated or delayed or uncertain, or if it comes in small purchase batches, your costs can go up. Sometimes, suppliers look at that and they just don't bid at all, especially when there's a lot of uncertainty. Now, you've got less competition and the country pays more. Why price isn't fixed 24:30: I remember getting a slap on my shoulder and turning around, and there stood John Martin, the CEO of Gilead. He said, “In a million years, I never would’ve expected that these Indian generic suppliers that you work with could make and sell the drug that we created below what our cost of making it is.” Let’s put this in perspective. The volumes that these Indian generic producers supplied to the market was smaller than what Gilead was doing at the time. And yet, they were able to make it and sell it for a profit below what the originator company Gilead’s cost of making it was. It shows what’s possible when you engage the right suppliers and appreciate that price isn’t fixed — it’s a function of the way you engage suppliers and how you structure demand.   Show Links: Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI)Past episodes on CHAI:The Art of the Market Shaping Deal, with Alan StapleDriving Down the Price of Critical Medicines, with Dr. David RipinLocal versus Global Market Shaping with Oliver SabotCHAI's Approach to Cost Plus Negotiations with Aaron PatilloVolume Guarantees and the High-Price, Low-Volume Trap with Hema Srinivasan Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    One More Look at the CHAI Playbook & Why It Matters Today

  2. Aug 11

    Volume Guarantees and the High-Price, Low-Volume Trap with Hema Srinivasan

    Hema Srinivasan, formerly the Chief Access Officer of MedAccess, a leader of CHAI’s market shaping work, and a former country director for a major pharma company, joins host Inder Singh to discuss how market shaping in global health has evolved to use more formal tools like volume guarantees. They discuss when and how volume guarantees should and should not be used, how they can help address the high-price, low-volume trap to dramatically lower prices and expand access to critical health products, and other use cases including ensuring supply security or incentivizing supply expansion. The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM. This interview was recorded in July 2026. Episode Quotes: Escaping the high-price, low-volume trap 09:48: It's core to the way any manufacturing organization runs its business. If you reduce uncertainty around how much you're going to produce, if you maximize the scale at which you're producing, you will save costs, and you can pass those on to the customer. And in the case of global health, that often becomes self-fulfilling. So, reducing that high-price, low-volume trap can become quite catalytic, where we would often see this issue where the price is really high, the volumes are low. We know if the price came down, the volumes would be quite a bit higher, and everyone would win. But the supplier doesn't see enough in the market to say, ‘Let me reduce the price and hope for the best.’ The credibility test every market shaper has to pass 35:19: You can't build a market-shaping success story just based on credibility with the public health community or credibility with the buy side of the market. You really need credibility with the suppliers and we tried to do a lot without that. That didn't work so well.  How do you know a volume guarantee is the right tool? 10:33: If we see the enabling environment is there for uptake and there are just these few critical market-related barriers that we can solve for that unlock that equation, then, we can implement a volume guarantee, and it can have massive impact. But the trick is really spending the time to understand is the market-related barrier what's really holding back access, and not something like developing a whole new product that isn't available today or doing a ton of health worker training work for many, many years. I think those other barriers to access always exist, but if they are much more important than the price or the supply, a volume guarantee won't be successful. Show Links:  Hema’s Bio | MedAccess Connect with Hema on LinkedIn Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    Volume Guarantees and the High-Price, Low-Volume Trap with Hema Srinivasan

  3. Jul 28

    CHAI's Approach to Cost Plus Negotiations with Aaron Patillo

    Aaron Patillo was a key member of the Clinton Health Access Initiative's (CHAI) original drug access team. Based in Beijing, he brokered deals with pharmaceutical companies that helped slash the price of HIV/AIDS medicines and expand access to treatment for millions. Aaron sits down with host Inder Singh to talk about how CHAI got suppliers to cooperate by opening their books, how the team used cost-plus pricing negotiations to ensure sustainable access to medicines while dramatically reducing prices, and how CHAI pushed costs even lower by going upstream in the supply chain. Aaron and Inder also swap stories from the early days at CHAI, reflecting on how its culture enabled remarkable achievements— major price reductions in short periods of time—when market shaping was still an untested idea. The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM. This interview was recorded in April, 2025. Episode Quotes: Why the lowest price isn't always the best solution 12:33: [Inder Singh]  Why did you not just take what you could get? Because I think people from the outside world looking in would be like, "Whoa, heck, get the lowest price you can," right? It's going to improve access. Why was that important? 12:44: [Aaron Patillo]  It was really important because we were focused on the sort of long-term molding of the, of these markets, right? I mean, President Clinton very eloquently put multiple times, these were markets that looked like a jewelry store, with very low, low volumes and very high margins. And our goal was to try, try to push these into ones that looked much more like grocery stores, high volumes and, and low margins. And so to do that, even if we could get a big win on margin at zero or negative margin, that would be ultimately like a short-term win. And we're interested in having this really be a sustainable improvement to the marketplace that we were making. Long-term solutions over short-term wins 12:02: This is not charity, and we want this to be like a long-term, viable, sustainable business decision, and very specifically, that has a profit margin for them. So, we weren't looking for handouts or these short-term results. Even if we could get what felt like, kind of, an easy win and they're willing to agree at any price, we actually said, "No, that's not how we're operating here. We need this to be, like, sustainable from a business point of view for you, the company." The ground rules for market-shaping partnership 19:36: We didn't just go out and establish partnerships with whoever we could find. This was a very well-vetted process. But it was very clear these are the ground rules and you'll have these improvements in volume in a way that you could not bring to bear just yourselves with throwing added marketing dollars at this, for instance, right? These were unlocking components of this that wasn't just a dollar allocation game in any way. A lot of these suppliers found that hugely useful and information they wouldn't have otherwise. Show Links:  Aaron Pattillo | LinkedIn Initiative for Medicines Access and Knowledge Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    CHAI's Approach to Cost Plus Negotiations with Aaron Patillo

  4. Jul 14

    Local versus Global Market Shaping with Oliver Sabot

    When it comes to market shaping, having a wide range of tools in your kit is critical. “You don’t want to be a hammer looking for a nail,” says today’s guest Oliver Sabot. Sabot has spent years shaping markets in various sectors including global health, education, and now climate. At the Clinton Healthcare Access Initiative (CHAI), he was a key leader in expanding access to life-saving treatments for children and families around the world. Since CHAI, he founded Kepler and Nova Pioneer, two ventures aimed at transforming education and training across Africa. Now, Sabot works as an executive coach to climate leaders and directs the climate division of the Kissick Family Foundation which backs promising innovations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change.  On this episode, he joins host Inder Singh to chat about the tactical lessons he’s learned from his multi-sector career including, how to diagnose market failures, scale impact, and what it takes to be a successful “quarterback” in market shaping.  The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM. This interview was recorded in May 2025. Episode Quotes: Why funding alone isn’t enough 17:14:  I see it again and again that,  as they move into new sectors, that's the last thing  that the community thinks of, right?  It will push hard on the funding, it will push hard on the, you know, advanced market commitments or new research and so forth, but it  doesn't invest comparatively tiny amounts of money in the quarterback role because it's very unsexy, right? Like,  you're not gonna do a press release on that, but it's immensely important. The trap of one-tool thinking in market shaping 23:29:  Different actors start  to have strong perspectives on one aspect of the market shaping toolkit. So some people say advanced market commitments are great.  I agree. I think advanced market commitments can be an amazing tool in some cases for some products, for some markets. But you don't want to be a hammer looking for a nail saying, like, the only thing that should ever be done is advanced market commitment, then you're only relevant to the 10% of the places where that's warranted. On acting like a private company to save lives 05:18:  So, essentially, what we did is, how can we, a group of social actors, how can we act like a drug company would, right? How can we actually work with suppliers of this, make it into attractive packaging, actually, sort of, launch it as a product and invest as a company would in the marketing and sales, down the chain through distributors and wholesalers. What are their incentives? What profit margins do they need to charge in order for this to be an attractive business for them down to the drug shops? Show Links:  “The Missing Tool in the Climate Fight” by Oliver Sabot and Dai Ellis | Stanford Social Innovation Review Oliver Sabot | LinkedIn Kissick Family Foundation Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    Local versus Global Market Shaping with Oliver Sabot

  5. Jun 30

    So You’ve Built Buying Power and Sent a Demand Signal, Now What?

    After five guest interviews packed with insights, host Inder Singh takes a step back to explore a key concept in market shaping—and what is often the first move. Across the interviews this season, regardless of sector, the first move has been remarkably consistent: effective market shaping begins by building, aggregating, and harmonizing demand to create buying power. And the organizations we've spoken with have done this through a "buying club." A buying club brings together buyers who are each too small to matter on their own, aligns their interests, and turns them into something the market has to respond to. In this episode, Inder breaks down why forming a buying club is often the first step in effective market shaping, and how to do it well. The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM. Episode Quotes: Buying power isn't just about finding buyers 06:52: Buying power isn't just about finding buyers. It's about getting three specific things. First, you need buyers who want the same thing . Every buyer has slightly different preferences, different specifications, different features or functionalities they want. The work is getting them aligned around a shared target, specific enough that a supplier knows what to build. Why do markets still get stuck even with real demand? 09:19: Building, aggregating, and harmonizing demand, often through a buying club, is just the first move. It's not the last one. Because even when you've done all that work, even when the demand is real, even when you've aligned the buyers, markets can still get stuck The power of a buying club 08:46: Without proof that real buyers with real budgets were in the room, the negotiation would have never happened. And the tool that does all of this is a buying club. I know that sounds a little ridiculous. It sounds like getting discounted mayonnaise at Costco. But in practice, it can be enormously powerful. It takes buyers who are each too small to matter on their own and turns them into something the market has to respond to. CHAI called theirs a buying consortium. Kim Carnahan at the Center for Green Market Activation calls hers a buyer alliance. Rich Powell's organization is literally called the Clean Energy Buyers Association. These are different words but the same concept. Show Links:  Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) Clean Energy Buyer’s Association (CEBA) Center for Green Market Activation (GMA) Cascade Climate Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    So You’ve Built Buying Power and Sent a Demand Signal, Now What?

  6. Jun 18

    The First Move in Market Shaping: Building Buying Power to Send a Demand Signal

    After five guest interviews packed with insights, host Inder Singh takes a step back to explore a key concept in market shaping—and what is often the first move. Across the interviews this season, regardless of sector, the first move has been remarkably consistent: effective market shaping begins by building, aggregating, and harmonizing demand to create buying power. And the organizations we've spoken with have done this through a "buying club." A buying club brings together buyers who are each too small to matter on their own, aligns their interests, and turns them into something the market has to respond to. In this episode, Inder breaks down why forming a buying club is often the first step in effective market shaping, and how to do it well. The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM. Episode Quotes: Buying power isn't just about finding buyers 06:52: Buying power isn't just about finding buyers. It's about getting three specific things. First, you need buyers who want the same thing . Every buyer has slightly different preferences, different specifications, different features or functionalities they want. The work is getting them aligned around a shared target, specific enough that a supplier knows what to build. Why do markets still get stuck even with real demand? 09:19: Building, aggregating, and harmonizing demand, often through a buying club, is just the first move. It's not the last one. Because even when you've done all that work, even when the demand is real, even when you've aligned the buyers, markets can still get stuck The power of a buying club 08:46: Without proof that real buyers with real budgets were in the room, the negotiation would have never happened. And the tool that does all of this is a buying club. I know that sounds a little ridiculous. It sounds like getting discounted mayonnaise at Costco. But in practice, it can be enormously powerful. It takes buyers who are each too small to matter on their own and turns them into something the market has to respond to. CHAI called theirs a buying consortium. Kim Carnahan at the Center for Green Market Activation calls hers a buyer alliance. Rich Powell's organization is literally called the Clean Energy Buyers Association. These are different words but the same concept. Show Links:  Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) Clean Energy Buyer’s Association (CEBA) Center for Green Market Activation (GMA) Cascade Climate Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    The First Move in Market Shaping: Building Buying Power to Send a Demand Signal

  7. Apr 7

    Decarbonizing The Hardest to Decarbonize Sectors with Kim Carnahan

    Let’s say a company has set an ambitious climate goal to drastically reduce their carbon emissions, but in order for them to meet that goal, they would need their supplier two or three links up the chain to clean up their own footprint. If the company has no relationship to this supplier and no influence over how they do business, how does the company get that supplier to reduce their emissions? That’s where Kim Carnahan and the Center for Green Market Activation come in. At GMA, Carnahan is working to decarbonize the hardest to decarbonize sectors including, aviation, maritime, trucking, and cement and concrete. GMA finds companies like the one described above and orchestrates procurement deals on their behalf with decarbonized suppliers.  On this episode, she joins host Inder Singh to break down the market-shaping tactics GMA is using to create and accelerate a greener market in the heavy industry and transport sectors. They go over the importance of aggregating demand through buyers’ alliances, how to build trust across buyers and suppliers in a nascent market, and the ways they’re incentivizing suppliers to innovate towards greener technologies.  The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM. This interview was recorded in June 2025. Episode Quotes: Climate ambition requires market expertise Most of the companies that we're working with are trying to decarbonize sectors that they don't actually work in. You know, they're a bank, but they fly a lot. And what they have found is, one, in almost all cases, the bulk of the emissions from the good they are buying don't lie with the supplier they buy it from. They lie three or four steps down the value chain to a supplier they have never met and certainly do not have a contract with. You very quickly faced this problem of influence, which is, does your supplier even have enough influence on the next guy to tell him anything? We had to find a way to connect the buyers with a willingness to pay a premium with the suppliers who actually need to be doing the hard, hard work of decarbonizing heavy industry and transport. You need something like this book and claim system that we design to help the money find its cause, so to speak. Markets don't shape themselves 26:23: Markets don't shape themselves; it's probably a naive idea that markets shape themselves, but really, behind every functioning market is infrastructure. And that's rules and laws and standards and registries and demand signals like what we're doing, and government policy, various incentives. Somebody had to put all of those in place and maintain them also over time. Altruism is not going to create green markets 27:02: Altruism is not going to create green markets. We aren't going to have green markets because we should have them, or because the planet needs it. We have to really look at risk and rewards, incentives, influence. That's what makes companies take action. So, use what you've got, where is their influence and where can we drive the creation of green markets. Show Links:  Kim Carnahan | LinkedIn The Center for Green Market Activation Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    Decarbonizing The Hardest to Decarbonize Sectors with Kim Carnahan

  8. Mar 24

    Harnessing Corporate Power for Clean Energy, with Rich Powell

    What if the best chance we have at creating a green energy future rests in the hands of the free markets?  Rich Powell is the CEO of the Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA), a group that consists of some of the largest buyers of electricity in the U.S. and across the globe. By leveraging the collective buying power of its members, CEBA is  creating low-cost, reliable, carbon emissions-free systems, and reshaping energy markets globally.  Powell joins host Inder Singh to discuss how capitalism can be wielded to fuel environmental progress, AI’s influence and impact on the acceleration of clean energy solutions, and the innovative levers CEBA is pulling to shift markets towards a more sustainable future.  The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM. This interview was recorded in May 2025.   Episode Quotes: Capitalism lifts people from poverty and drives the path to a cleaner world 03:01: I am a capitalist and a proud capitalist. I don't think I have to spend a lot of time defending capitalism's record on lifting people out of poverty and making economies that are wealthy enough to start to really worry about the second-order problems of environmental quality and then the third-order problems. I've actually spent, through some of my previous experiences, a fair amount of time in post-Soviet situations, and I have seen the utter environmental devastation that centrally planned economies can wreak on their environments and on their populations. So, I've seen real environmental injustice in those places. And so, I do think that capitalism is the force that it has and continues to lift people around the world out of poverty. And that's going to enable us to afford the things we'll need to do to go all the rest of the way, to achieve a global economy that's ultimately clean. How corporate demand is driving clean energy innovation 38:15: You've got a situation now where electricity demand growth is being driven by a number of companies that are really interested in doing it with low-carbon or carbon-free power, that have strong commitments in that regard, and that have, obviously, for everything we just discussed, very large balance sheets and a willingness to kind of take on, in many cases, higher technology risk in supplying those operations than maybe your average, consumer-serving utility would be. And so, that's driving some really cool innovation in this space. From three companies to a nationwide clean energy movement 26:11: This is kind of wild to think, so only 13 years ago, only three companies had voluntarily transacted renewable electricity in the United States, and that was Walmart and Google, and General Motors…[27:05] And going from those three companies today, we've had 235 companies in the U.S. that have transacted some volume in some way of clean electricity. And we've gone from a couple dozen megawatts to now 100 gigawatts. So, that's like three orders of magnitude up from those early purchases, which is really exciting… [10:15]: And if you take that 100 gigawatts, so like what we've contracted for so far, and you were to compare that by capacity to U.S. states, we're the largest state. California, for example, that has a commitment to going 100% clean is a smaller total capacity than that figure. It's like we've created another state that's moving faster than the rest of the states and is actually growing. We're just getting started.   Show Links:  Clean Energy Buyers Association Enough Red Tape – We Need To Say Yes to Clean Energy | Rich Powell | TED Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    Harnessing Corporate Power for Clean Energy, with Rich Powell
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Welcome to Market Shapers — a podcast about harnessing capitalism for good, hosted by Inder Singh, a founder, CEO, and pioneer of the practice of “market shaping.” On this show, Inder sits down with leaders, innovators, and behind-the-scenes dealmakers who’ve changed the way markets work, often in ways most people never see. They’ll unpack how they did it, what they learned, and how those lessons can help tackle the big challenges ahead. Follow Market Shapers on LinkedIn and Instagram @marketshaperspod.

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