oxygen india rs hospitals also said raising

Startups, tech giants pitch in to help IndiaCHENNAI: Founders of India’s internet companies, marquee investors, and techgiants like Amazon have extended their support to tackling the ongoinghealthcare crisis. From using their social influence to crowdfund essentials,to amplifying call for donations, to throwing open innovation challenges toscale oxygen availability — they are doing it all.Silicon Valley-based Indian investor Vinod Khosla to tweeted on Sunday,offering to fund hospitals at this time of crisis. “I’m willing to fundhospitals in India that need funding to import bulk planeloads of oxygen orsupplies into India to increase supply. Public hospitals/NGOs also pls reachout.” He tagged the PMO and health ministry. In a separate tweet, Khoslaalso called upon US president Biden to release the AstraZeneca vaccinesstocked in the US for use in India.Food delivery major Zomato said its not-for-profit arm Feeding India isjoining hands with logistics unicorn Delhivery to set in motion the ‘HelpSave My India’ plan. The company is raising funds to procure and distributeoxygen concentrators to hospitals and patients. “We have already kickstartedthe effort, and now need your help to raise Rs 50 crore for Feeding India inthe next few days (hours?) to save hundreds of thousands of lives. If we raisemore, we will get more oxygen,” Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal said onTwitter.Paytm’s Paytm Foundation is also focusing on oxygen shortage and raising Rs2 crore on its app to donate oxygen concentrators, and is matchingcontributions received from users. “We have sourced supplies for oxygenconcentrators of different sizes while we place the order using our ownmoney…,” Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma tweeted.Kunal Shah, founder of recently minted unicorn Cred, tweeted, believes thatthe real challenge lies in availability of cryogenic containers to get oxygento hospitals. He took to Twitter on Sunday looking for leads. “We arelooking to fund innovative ideas to solve 1) building self-sufficient oxygenplants within hospitals 2) finding creative ways to convert other containersto move oxygen,” Shah posted on Twitter.ACT Grants, the brainchild of around 40 marquee investors like Accel, KalaariCapital, Lightspeed and others, is raising over Rs 75 crore for home healthmanagement, oxygen solutions and other tools to support the country’shealthcare sector. Sequoia India’s Tejeshwi Sharma made a call on Twitter onSaturday for contributions from the ecosystem. “We have already raised Rs 50crore to commit to oxygen solutions, vaccinations and home healthcare,” hesaid after a day. Amazon India on Sunday said it has joined hands with ACTGrants, Temasek Foundation, Pune Platform for Covid -19 Response (PPCR) andother partners to urgently airlift over 8,000 oxygen concentrators and 500BiPAP machines from Singapore.Payments platform Razorpay is making it easier for NGOs and others to transactfor relief work on their platform, while bike rental startup Bounce hasenabled donations on its app. The cryptocurrency community too is raisingcapital for the cause. Responding to a crowdfunding drive launched on Twitterby entrepreneur Sandeep Nailwal, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of cryptocurrencyEthereum, donated around $600,000 (about Rs 4.5 crore) for India’s Covidrelief. Indian American investor and entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan alsodonated $50,000 worth in cryptocurrency.