Covid-19 has had an unprecedented impact on life and business. However, in situations like these true mettle shines through. Several of our founders rose up to the challenge the pandemic threw at them. They are not only navigating through the situation with resolve but going over and above.
With the lockdown being imposed, the unavailability of public transport was severely impacting the mobility of healthcare workers. Revv, a self-drive car rental brand, earmarked more than 1000 of its vehicles for these health workers fighting the battle against covid19. Revv not only offered its service but also provided PPE, free of cost.
The police have been doing their job in highly trying and risky circumstances. To reduce this risk, Droom, an AI-driven auto marketplace, initiated a project to deep sanitize the police fleet of cars and bikes using its Germ-Shield technology. This technology, launched under Droom Health, is an antimicrobial surface protection shield for automobiles.
Testing of symptomatic as well as asymptomatic patients has been a major need. Healthians, India’s largest health test at home service, launched 3 drive-through corona-19 testing sites in Gurgaon. The samples collected by skilled technicians would be tested in ECMR approved labs and results made available within 48 hours. NIRAMAI, a pioneer in breast health screening, initiated a COVID Project that automated the screening process to quickly identify people with possible infection. The solution checks for fever plus associated respiratory diseases through remote automated screening that can be operated by a skilled health worker, thus reducing the pressure on clinical testing.
Mfine, an on-demand virtual healthcare service, set up an AI tool to help patients, without direct doctor intervention. The tool would analyse patents’ condition and tell if they need to go for medical testing or not. An extension of the tool would then help them to identify the nearest testing lab, isolation, and treatment facility.
The most affected citizens group are the elderly. Milkbasket, India’s first and largest micro-delivery service, started a senior citizen helpline to assist them with the delivery of essentials. NoBroker, a disruptive real-estate platform aiding no-brokerage, did something similar to society residents. It launched a grocery service and delivered essentials in a safe and hygienic manner.
Some of the problems that Covid-19 threw at us have been unprecedented and therefore the solutions have to be out of the box and radical. HackerEarth, an AI-powered skill-based assessment platform, held a 72-hour online hackathon in partnership with IIM-B, called ‘hackCOVID’. The not-for-profit initiative attracted global engineers, developers, data scientists and health workers identifying solutions to fight problems arising from Covid-19.