On Sunday, Zomato, an online foodtech website, and Paytm, a payment giant, launched donation drives to assist hospitals and families of people affected by COVID-19, in obtaining oxygen concentrators and other medical supplies. Furthermore, both organisations claim to have found oxygen concentrator supplies and are planning to pose the orders through the donation process.
The news comes as many hospitals and health facilities in the nation’s capital and other areas of the world are running out of oxygen supplies for covid patients. Zomato is partnering with logistics company Delhivery, to procure concentrators and related supplies for hospitals and families in need through its not-for-profit arm, Feeding India. Zomato is collecting 50 crores for Feeding India over the next few days as part of the ‘Help Save My India’ campaign, in order to solve the country’s severe shortage of oxygen cylinders and concentrators.
“We’ve already launched the campaign, and now we need your support to collect Rs. 50 crores for Feeding India in the next few days (hours?) to save hundreds of thousands of lives. “If we raise more money, we’ll get more oxygen,” said Deepinder Goyal, the company’s founder, on Twitter. The news comes just a day after Delhivery announced that, with the aid of its airline partners, it will be flying charter flights at subsidised rates to assist importers in obtaining oxygen concentrators and other covid-relief services in the region.
In the coming week, Delhivery plans to add two flights, and will continue to expand capacity based on demand. “We’ve been getting a lot of requests for critical items to be imported, and we’ve noticed that there’s a shortage of air cargo space, especially from China. To address this, we’ve agreed to temporarily deploy our own charters in conjunction with our airline partners”, said Sandeep Barasia, chief business officer and managing director of Delhivery.
We’ll fly these charters at subsidised rates to make sure that a capacity shortage on air freight doesn’t cause delays or make logistics for these critical items prohibitive. Apart from air transportation, we will assist with local transportation on both ends and customs clearance in India, again via partners,” added Sandeep Barasia. .
Paytm Foundation, on the other hand, claims to have sourced supplies of various sizes of oxygen concentrators, and is raising $2 million to donate them to health institutions across India. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of Paytm, announced that the company would match individual donations to double the number of concentrators available in the country.
“India is in desperate need of your assistance due to a lack of oxygen. We’ve found a variety of oxygen concentrators in various sizes. We’d like to buy twice as much food and bring it here. Please donate here: https://m.paytm.me/oxygen and Paytm will match every rupee,” Vijay Shekhar Sharma wrote on Twitter.
In order to increase oxygen availability in the country, the Centre agreed on Saturday to waive the customs duty and health cess on imports of oxygen and oxygen-related equipment for three months, effective immediately. According to Mint, many Gurugram-based entrepreneurs have banded together to launch a fundraiser called “Mission Oxygen”, to provide 3,000 oxygen concentrators to 14 hospitals in Maharashtra and Delhi.
