Market Shapers with Inder Singh

About Market Shapers with Inder Singh

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.

Publisher

Inder Singh

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

3 Feb 2026

Latest episode

29 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

13 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   29 Sept 2026

   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.

2. 

   11 Aug 2026

   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.

3. 

   28 Jul 2026

   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.

4. 

   14 Jul 2026

   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.

5. 

   30 Jun 2026

   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.

6. 

   18 Jun 2026

   The First Move in Market Shaping: Assembling Your Buying Club

   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.

7. 

   7 Apr 2026

   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.

8. 

   24 Mar 2026

   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.

9. 

   10 Mar 2026

   Driving Down the Price of Critical Medicines, with Dr. David Ripin

   Dr. David Ripin, the Chief Scientific Officer at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) joins host Inder Singh to discuss a watershed market shaping effort: the price reduction of a key drug, tenofovir. This price reduction helped shift and scale treatment for millions of people living with HIV/AIDS. Today, Tenofovir is used by 30M people globally. But when it was first introduced, it was more expensive than the entire three drug cocktail used at the time, and global leaders argued it should NOT be deployed in developing countries because budgets could not stretch far enough. What happened next changed that. CHAI and its partners drove the price down nearly 60% in under four years, helping unlock widespread adoption. Its price today is more than 80% lower than when it was first introduced. David and Inder discuss the approaches and tactics that enabled these massive price reductions. 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: SHORT VIDEO: On disrupting the equilibrium 15:32: While all of this sounds fairly basic and intuitive, there's a lot of work back there. And because all of these companies are focused on introducing the next drug in, at some point you get into a market situation where you have a local equilibrium. 16:11: The water could be downhill, it would be happier downhill, but the water doesn't know that, right? The water is in this mountain peak, and it's perfectly content there. And it takes someone coming along and drilling a hole to disrupt that market and then reset it so that everyone realizes, oh, okay, the water needs to be down there now—or let's call it what it is, the price. And so, that's really what we had to undertake when we were focused on lowering the costs of Tenofovir. SOCIAL CARD: Access is the real innovation 32:33: You could cure cancer, but if you do it in a way that no one can afford, you still have a problem. AUDIOGRAM: Why competition can move markets forward 17:43: Let's say you have a mark and you have two or three companies. They've developed a drug. They've spent a lot of money doing it. They're generally competing. They're basically the same technology as each other. So, their costs are comparable. They're going to come to a relatively stable pricing level. Now, you know, the other thing to remember is this absolutely massive generic drug market. Twenty-five million to thirty million people are taking the same drug once a day, every day, for their entire lives. And represents a massive business opportunity. So if I'm supplier number four—you know, I'm the next supplier, and I'm looking at this market, it looks really attractive to me. I want in. But I already, you know, see three guys have market share. It's hard to come in...[19:37] So, if I can incorporate changes that get me a cheaper starting material or a more efficient process before I spend money the first time to develop this drug, I'm going to come into the market with a market advantage. I'm going to disrupt that equilibrium. Show Links: Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) Optimizing the Manufacture, Formulation, and Dose of Antiretroviral Drugs (or here for the full article) Healthy Markets for Global Health: A Market Shaping Primer

10. 

    24 Feb 2026

    The Art of the Market Shaping Deal, with Alan Staple

    Market Shaping can feel a bit like Mission Impossible sometimes. How are you going to get all these groups across the world, with different incentives and priorities, to come to an agreement on a plan that could change the world? In this episode, Alan Staple, former Vice President of Market Access at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, joins host Inder Singh to discuss the deals he’s done in reshaping markets . Staple takes listeners behind closed doors at major pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies and gives an up-close look at tactics that enabled massive price reductions that brought access to life-saving health products for millions of people. He shares lessons he learned along the way about how to do this kind of work. 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: When market shaping starts with an impossible assignment 02:09: So, a lot of these assignments, especially when I first started, kind of, had the Mission Impossible, sort of, sound about them. Somebody would call you up and say, "Look, we've got to get this done. Here's what has to happen. Get on with it," and, you know, call me. And sometimes our goals were extremely audacious and very, very challenging. And you would get about as much background information as they do on the Mission Impossible show. You get two sentences, and then the tape, kind of, evaporates, and you're going, ″Oh, really? Okay, how are we going to do it?" One of the largest market shaping deals ever attempted 19:17: This was probably one of the biggest deals that had ever been done in market-shaping at the time, where the Gates Foundation and others risked over $300 million on a six-year-long volume guarantee, where quarterly orders had to be met over that entire period. And we committed to 40 million units of the product at a time when the sales were around 2 million units a year. So, we were predicting a very large increase in usage. Why credibility is a foundation of market shaping 01:37: If you are going to engage in bringing the supply side and the demand side together as a, kind of, trusted intermediary, the key to that is credibility. How are you going to have credibility with the sellers, the drug companies, and diagnostic companies? How are you going to have credibility with the buyers, who may represent national health services, in our case, or international agencies that are procuring products for these countries? How do you get that credibility, and then how do you utilize it to become a trusted intermediary?

11. 

    10 Feb 2026

    From Global Health to Climate: Shaping Markets Across Sectors, with Dai Ellis

    Today’s guest is Dai Ellis, founder and CEO of Cascade Climate. Dai spent his career creating and accelerating the development of systems and markets in multiple sectors – first in global health, then in education, and now climate tech. In this episode, Dai tells host Inder Singh all about the work he and his team at Cascade are doing to orchestrate markets for innovations that will help stabilize our climate. He also reveals the key lessons he learned from his time at CHAI leading groundbreaking work that reduced the price of life-saving medicines, and how he’s imported those lessons to the climate sector. Dai and Inder dig into the market shaping tools he honed in global health to tackle climate issues, the critical role of market orchestrators in driving large-scale systemic change, and how someone could create that role in a new sector. The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM. The interview was recorded in May 2025. Episode Quotes: SHORT VIDEO: Why the real power of market shaping lives in the middle 09:12: The stance of a market shaper is fundamentally to occupy a middle ground on that question: to neither, capitalism is what's causing this problem in the first place, which is not without any truth obviously, nor at the other end of the spectrum to say, markets will solve this. To choose to be a market shaper is to say there's truth in both of those things, that, like, there's truth in the idea that markets are a powerful way to organize incentives and organize human behavior and action toward outcomes, and they're deeply flawed when left unattended and unregulated in terms of, you know, what outcomes you are going to see from that. SOCIAL CARD: What market shaping actually is and why it matters across sectors 08:05: You have to have power to market shape, but it's not just financial power or government power, like hard power. A lot of it is soft power. How do we assemble soft power and other forms of, you know, influence and steerability? And then how do we put that to work, and coordinate efforts to get us more quickly from place A to place B? AUDIOGRAM: What it really means to be a market orchestrator 24:49: I think Cascade is very explicitly trying to offer itself up as an orchestrator for specific market shaping initiatives. Your ability to orchestrate is fundamentally targeted or limited. But you're trying to do that in high… Oh, I hate the word leverage, but highly leveraged, wise. Show Links: Cascade Climate Dai Ellis Bio Dai Ellis on Substack

12. 

    10 Feb 2026

    Market Shaping 101

    Welcome to Market Shapers — a podcast about harnessing capitalism for good. On this inaugural episode, host Inder Singh explains what Market Shaping is and shares why he launched this podcast and what’s in store for this season. In his words: “Fifteen years ago, I had the privilege of being a part of a small group that brokered deals between 70 countries and 22 pharmaceutical companies. What we accomplished still feels remarkable: Prices fell 30–90%, billions of dollars were saved, and millions of people gained access to life-saving drugs. The results are well known. The how is not. This podcast attempts to change that. The goal is simple: tell the stories and teach the lessons so others can help drive impact in the world. If you’re a capitalist, I’ll challenge the idea that markets left alone reliably produce optimal outcomes. If you work in nonprofits, philanthropy, public health, or government, I’ll challenge the reflexive skepticism of markets and profit—showing how, when designed well, they can dramatically scale social impact.” The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM.

13. 

    3 Feb 2026

    Introducing: Market Shapers with Inder Singh

    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.” The podcast explores how markets can be deliberately structured to drive access, reduce costs, and scale innovation. 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. This show challenges the classic view that markets left alone yield optimal outcomes. But it also challenges the skepticism that markets can’t be used as a force for scaling social impact. Subscribe to Market Shapers wherever you get your podcasts and don’t miss the first episode available February 10, 2026. Follow Market Shapers on LinkedIn and Instagram @marketshaperspod. The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM.

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Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

4 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

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