An impact consulting firm built on 20 years inside government systems.
Catalytic Corps partners with governments, philanthropies, and development organisations to design programmes that government systems can actually absorb, own, and sustain — closing the gap between reform intent and system-level change.
A specialist firm at the intersection of government, philanthropy, and systems change.
Founded in 2020 by Sandeep Mishra, Catalytic Corps was built on a hard-won insight from more than two decades inside India's most complex public systems — that the gap between design and delivery is almost always structural, not technical.
What we do
We provide Government Adoption Advisory and Research & Evaluation services — helping programmes navigate the institutional complexity of government systems and generating rigorous evidence that drives better decision-making.
Who we work with
Foundations and philanthropies funding social programmes, bilateral and multilateral development organisations, state governments designing policy implementation, and NGOs preparing programmes for government scale.
What drives us
The belief that most large-scale development programmes fail not from insufficient funding or weak intent, but because of a structural gap between what external partners design and what government systems can absorb, own, and sustain.
Primarily India. Increasingly global.
Our work is primarily concentrated across Indian states where the complexity of public system engagement is highest — education, health, livelihoods, and water. We are increasingly active in international development contexts where government adoption remains a critical challenge.
The Problem We Were Built to Solve
After two decades managing some of India's most complex education programme reforms, Sandeep Mishra observed a pattern that repeated itself across geographies, funders, and sectors: well-designed programmes, rigorously evaluated, adequately funded — and yet failing to scale or sustain within government systems.
The failure was not technical. It was structural. Programmes were designed by external partners who understood their subject deeply but were not equipped to navigate the institutional complexity of government systems — the incentive structures, budget cycles, political dynamics, and bureaucratic cultures that determine whether a reform takes root or withers.
Catalytic Corps was founded in 2020 to close that gap. Not by replacing the expertise of our partners — but by adding the institutional intelligence that makes their work survive and scale inside government. We built two integrated practices for this: Government Adoption Advisory and Research & Evaluation.
"The gap between reform intent and system-level change is not a knowledge problem. It is a system fit problem. Catalytic Corps was built to solve for system fit — deliberately, rigorously, and permanently."
Ready to work together?
Whether you need Government Adoption Advisory, Research & Evaluation, or want to explore how the G-ART Compass can assess your programme's readiness — we should talk.