How MapmyIndia CEO Rohan Verma is helping India battle against Covid-19

As his company helps keep oxygen tankers on track, Verma tells Jyoti Mukul it's high time technology was scaled up so that India never encounters such chaos and inefficiencies again

It is four in the evening, a little early for evening tea, when I meet Rohan Verma, chief executive officer and executive director, MapmyIndia, for a cuppa  — virtually, of course. Verma has turned up with his regular milk tea and I with my staple post-lunch tulsi mulethi organic brew.
 
The New Delhi-headquartered MapmyIndia, which has partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) for an indigenous map, navigation and geospatial application and service, is currently working to ensure that there is no delay in the transportation of oxygen to the thousands infected with Covid-19. Not a producer of oxygen but a tracker of volumes coming out of production sites, MapmyIndia is installing global positioning system (GPS) devices on tankers and helping organisations in Danapur (Bihar), Kochi (Kerala), Puducherry, Thane (Mumbai), Rudraprayag (Uttarakhand), Delhi and Jammu, among others, to deliver oxygen to intended destinations in a hurdle-free, fast and precise manner. It’s a job his company has volunteered to do, free of charge.

 
On the wall behind Verma, I spot a collage of neatly framed family pictures — a constant reminder of all things precious and of the need to hold on to loved ones in this difficult time.
 

“There is a crisis all around. We hear among our family, friends and colleagues about people suffering,” he says. “That people are dying because oxygen is not reaching them is something we all know about and it may not be because of lack of production anymore, but because it is stuck somewhere,” he adds, as we begin our conversation on a grim note. Just two days back, 24 Covid patients died at the Chamarajanagar hospital in Karnataka reportedly because to oxygen shortage.

 
Such stories of oxygen not reaching desperate patients, perhaps because the vehicle was stuck somewhere or the system collapsed, are what caught the attention of this 35-year-old electrical engineer from Stanford who also holds a management degree from London Business School.
 
If an oxygen tanker has to reach five places but is unable to make it to even one of them on time, the delay can have a cascading effect, he says. “We have been using GPS tracking systems for many years to ensure that goods are delivered seamlessly and there is no unnecessary stoppage or pilferage,” he says, sipping his tea from an orange cup. “In this Covid emergency we thought why not apply the same technology to oxygen tankers and medical equipment and smoothen the supply chain.”

 
Within a week of putting out its offer of enabling transport vehicles with GPS, the company was flooded with requests from across the country.
 
So, chip-enabled devices were installed on vehicles. The device is a black box with a SIM card for sending information remotely over the internet. The GPS chip captures the vehicle’s current coordinates (longitude and latitude), its speed and direction of travel. Other sensors tell if the storage has been opened. The vehicle owner or operator can monitor all the current and historical information, and can also give access to it to other stakeholders, such as the government, so that there is visibility and transparency. The choice of which information to share or which not to lies with the fleet owner or operator. For instance, they may choose not to share the driver’s mobile number so that people do not call him and distract him.

 
The company wanted to ensure that the devices did not add to the commercial burden of organisations involved in the transportation, so it decided to offer the service free of cost. “This is the technology through which we are trying to enable and assist frontline workers by ensuring that oxygen vehicles are not stopped unnecessarily. You can time their arrival, see their location on the map, see the speed at which they are travelling, and know how far from the destination they are,” he says.
 
I ask him whether oxygen is no longer a production problem but a logistical one. “That’s very hard to tell when people are saying different things. That is why digitisation of information, which presents facts before everybody, is important. For instance, if a particular (state) government says that an oxygen vehicle has gone to five hospitals, then a GPS-tracked vehicle will be able to show this on the map,” he says emphatically. This puts to rest all speculation, fake news and misinformation around it.

 
Verma was only 19 when he set up India’s first interactive mapping portal, mapmyindia.com.
 
Since governments are on the back foot, could regular, centralised city-wise bulletins from those dealing with oxygen allocation and distribution bring in some transparency, I ask. “The fact is that no government is fully prepared with the information. I think they are trying but they are struggling to get information,” he says. “Governments have, in part, adopted this technology but do not have a comprehensive view of this system. Putting out a simple bulletin for everybody who needs to know the status could help.”

 
The country is facing an unprecedented health crisis. Verma’s advice is: “Make sure now that you are implementing technology and adopting it at a scale that never again do we encounter such inefficiencies and chaos.” At the moment, everyone is scrambling and wanting to do something, he feels.
 
The oxygen vehicles are privately owned and usually do not have a government tracking them. “Private operators of these tankers feel this is an overburdening of appliances. In a non-pandemic situation, these challenges could have been ironed out smoothly and the system could have been prepared, but in the middle of all this, it adds to the stress.”

 
Why has the second wave been so overwhelming when the country has among the best of technologies and industrial players? Is it purely a case of management failure, I ask. “As a citizen, I would request all the people in positions of authority to collaborate with each other. A lot of bickering has happened. It is the biggest malaise for the country,” he says, adding, “Last year, everybody collaborated and people were focused on fighting Covid. But in the last four-five months, it is obvious why we are facing this challenge  — because everyone has their own agendas.”
 

There was also complacency on the part of citizens but the bigger challenge, he says, is to ensure that the physical infrastructure like hospital beds, ICUs, ventilators and the human capital of doctors and nurses are available. Additionally, wherever technology can augment and bring transparency, it should be used. “Despite the glitches, for example, there is a CoWIN, which has put a system in place to book for vaccination.”
 
Haven’t we already lost a lot of time? “Of course, we have. That is frustrating. It is very depressing. You feel terrible because people who didn’t have to are dying. It’s tragic at every level,” he says, adding that the only thing to do is to plough on. In his case that means ensuring tech support to keep the desperately needed oxygen tankers on track.