Everyone wants to contribute their share during this time of crisis. And this is the exact reason COVIDIndia.org was developed. Today, there are more than 500 volunteers who have joined this platform to develop it as a knowledge-sharing war room. In addition to supplying personal protective equipment (PPE) to the frontline health workers.
Sharing knowledge
When you first land on the page, you will think it is just another website that is tracking the progress of Coronavirus in the country. “It is more than just another website sharing COVID-related data (like the number of infected, number of cured etc). It is a platform that has developed a national task force to augment state and district war rooms. Here, we share best practices learnt from one state and can be implemented in another,” said Riddhi Mittal, co-founder for the initiative. Recently, a demo of the war room was run live on Facebook.
Speaking to the Free Press Journal, Mittal said, “We want to contain the spread of the virus and we are doing it by spreading knowledge.” This initiative in a way is allowing entrepreneurs to display their skills at this time of crisis. Mittal, who is an entrepreneur herself, stressed this is a real test of time for all entrepreneurs.
COVIDIndia.org has been able to establish ties with many associations to try and promote various concepts that can be utilised to tackle this pandemic.
“This platform will help most of our volunteers including me, to explore and learn new aspects of healthcare. I had no idea about the supply chain of healthcare but now, I am learning. I will be taking a lot back from this,” added Mittal, who co-founded fintech platform Finomena.
“The reason for this platform is to help contain COVID 19 in the best possible way and once this virus is contained, there will be no point of this website. But what we learn from this will remain forever,” expressed Mittal. She is optimistic that she would be using her knowledge to do something more in healthcare someday. “In my previous startup as well, I was looking at providing solutions and that is what I look for. And if I find any such area in healthcare that needs solution then I will explore it in the future,” she revealed.
Laugh it out
But it was not all work for COVIDIndia.org team, as they decided to get some fun elements to raise Rs 35 lakh. This amount was to buy PPE for frontline health workers of Sion Hospital, Mumbai and JP Hospital, Bhopal. For this initiative, 80 plus standup comedians and influencers joined hands with COVIDIndia.org and Kashtakari panchayat.
Live streaming was hosted by Tanmay Bhat from 2- 10 pm on April 11 and 12. Along with Bhat, there were Kaneez Surka, Kenny Sebastian, and Abish Mathew to name a few comedians, who were engaging with the audience. On the first day, the influencers raised more than Rs 7 lakh. “The fundraiser activity was hosted by Tanmay Bhat and it went very well for us. We haven't got the complete tally of the funds. We will be able to share that by the end of April 2020,” stated Mittal.
Other than running a fundraising campaign on Give India’s platform, YouTube’s feature was used to make direct payments as well.
