Contributions pour in from domestic, foreign firms in fight against Covid

Contributions from homegrown and international firms, including Dream Sports, Uber and Capgemini, continue to pour in to support India's fight against COVID-19 amid the deadly second wave of the pandemic in the country.

Dream Sports - which operates e-sports platform Dream11 - has donated Rs 15 crore to GiveIndia and ACT Grants for medical equipment, hospital beds and aiding the vaccination drive.

"Half of this will be spent on solving the current problem of supplying medical equipment and hospital beds and the other half will go towards supporting large scale vaccination drives.

We will also be enabling contributions on our apps in a couple of days from all Sportans, our over 100 million users, and anyone else, to expedite the war against Covid-19," a Dream Sports spokesperson said.

The massive rise in infections in the second wave of the pandemic has led to hospitals in several states reeling under a shortage of medical oxygen and beds. Social media timelines are filled with SOS calls with people looking for oxygen cylinders, hospital beds, plasma donors and ventilators. Organisations across the spectrum have come forward to support the fight against the COVID pandemic.

Ride-hailing platform Uber said it will spend Rs 18.5 crore (USD 2.5 million) to get 1.5 lakh drivers on its platform vaccinated over the next six months.

The company will compensate car, auto and moto drivers on its platform for time spent getting their shots, it said in a statement.

"Drivers showing valid digital vaccination certificates will be eligible for Rs 400 for each of their two shots. All drivers able to show they've been vaccinated before April 30 will also be able to claim the funds," it added.

Pavan Vaish, Head of Supply and Driver Operations at Uber India South Asia, said mass vaccination is key to tackling India's COVID crisis, and this is the best way to ensure that drivers, riders and the broader community can get protected as soon as possible.

"Over the last year, Uber drivers have shown time and time again they are essential in keeping India moving and connected, so we want to support them in getting the best possible access to the vaccination program. We will soon begin communicating this initiative to drivers across all our product lines, and encourage them to take up the offer, he added.

IT firm Capgemini said it will cover the cost of coronavirus vaccines of all eligible employees and their dependents and is working with partners to enable on-premise vaccination services.

The company has set up a centralised, all-India command centre to address employees' and their dependent's medical emergencies and needs related to the availability of hospital beds, ICU, ventilators, ambulance service, blood plasma donors, oxygen concentrators, and medicine requests.

It has also started an initiative to provide home-cooked meals to colleagues affected by COVID-19 and has also partnered with various hotels to provide quarantine centres for 14 days.

"At Capgemini, we have initiated Project O2 to provide Oxygen Concentrators for our colleagues and their dependent family members who have been impacted by COVID-19...Capgemini has introduced Covid-19 response products like oximeter, N95 masks and infrared thermometers which can be ordered by all Capgemini colleagues and have them delivered to their current place of residence," it added.

Besides, Capgemini Group had instituted a Benevolent Fund last year for Capgemini India employees and their families.

As part of this fund, a corpus of 25 million euros (Rs 200 crore) was parked separately and the income generated from this corpus was used towards health and safety areas for Capgemini India employees and their families.

Cloud-based software provider Salesforce is making a USD 1 million donation to help with COVID relief on the ground to local partners focused on medical equipment and supply sourcing, vaccine awareness and distribution, community isolation centres, and food security.

It has launched a global employee giving and matching campaign to further the impact and is also working with partners to source and deliver medical tools and supplies.

Bike taxi platform Rapido said it has partnered with essential suppliers like Zomato, Swiggy, BigBasket, Delhivery, Grab, Xpressbees, and Udaan for aiding last-mile deliveries.

"These partnerships are live across Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Vijayawada, Tirupati, and Guntur.

Rapido is supporting these partners in the delivery of medicines, essential groceries, and food from restaurants, helping small-scale industries stock up their inventory and finding more ways of contributing to the fight against COVID-19," Proful Lall, Vice President (Corporate Affairs) at Rapido, said.