#StartupsVsCovid19: Meet The 27 Initiatives Backed By Action Covid-19 Team

In an attempt to help the government’s initiatives and develop a robust ecosystem to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, several Indian tech leaders and investors have come together to form the Action Covid-19 Team (ACT) to financially support innovative ideas.

For this, the team had set up an INR 100 Cr grant to help ideas, initiatives and startups looking to combat Covid-19. Several big investment firms like Lightspeed, Kalaari, SAIF Partners, India Quotient, Sequoia, Matrix, Omidyar Network India, Nexus, Accel, Chiratae, and Blume Ventures had extended their support to ACT.

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The corpus does not have any strict deadline, but it is looking to disburse an average ticket size of INR 25 Lakh to INR 1 Cr, depending on the need, in the span of two-to-four months. So far, the grant has been allocated to 26 firms, which are solving challenges like shortage of medical equipment, helping in monitoring the situation, providing mass and affordable testing solutions, and more.

Besides healthcare and medical devices, the group is also focussing on mental health startups. ACT has placed bids on three mental health organisations Mind Piper, Aatma Prakash, and I Am trough the grant.

Here are the 26 initiatives which received grants from ACT.

1. 1mg
   Team: Dedicated team within 1mg
   Grant: INR 20 Lakh

   Gurugram-based epharmacy 1mg is developing a network of online healthcare-related services linked to coronavirus. The company is currently offering teleconsultation with healthcare professionals and has also developed drive-through booths for Covid-19 testing.

2. Clovia
   Team: Neha Kant, Pankaj Vermani
   Grant: INR 20 Lakh

   Online lingerie retailer Clovia is manufacturing PPE kits. The company is also adding additional features to make the PPE kits safes. These features include products made of higher GSM fabrics with lamination, sealed seams with anti-bacterial tapes, flap over zipper sealed with velcro.

3. CoronaSafe Network
   Team: CoronaSafe Team
   Grant: INR 50 Lakh

   CoronaSafe is a verified crowdsourced guide to tackle Covid-19. The project which is implemented in Kerala is led by a group of professional volunteers. The project has also developed a live data system for the Kerala government to keep a track of the number of cases.

4. COVID Response Helpline
   Team: Siddhant Khurana, Akanksha Chandele
   Grant: INR 30 Lakh

   COVID Response is a special helpline that is offering mental and emotional support to the vulnerable sections of the society, who have been hit by the current crisis. In the last two weeks, it has answered over 30,000 calls. COVID Response team is also partnering with state governments and startups to benefit more people.

5. Drone Maps
   Team: Utkarsh Singh, Ayushi Mishra
   Grant: INR 20 Lakh

   Gurugram-based DroneMaps is offering drone-based high-resolution 3D mapping and photography to help the government monitor and track Covid-19 patients in a scalable manner. The company is leveraging data management/structuring and geographic information system (GIS) visualisation to create a full-service technology-enabled war-room solution.

6. Drone Federation of India
   Team: Smit Shah
   Grant: INR 30 Lakh

   Drone Federation of India is an industry body that is developing a platform to connect state authorities with drone pilots. The company believes that this will provide a simple monitoring solution to local police. The drones can also be used for conducting sanitation drives or delivery with manufacturers.

7. ePsyclinic
   Team: Shipra Dawar, Ashish Dwivedi
   Grant: INR 15 Lakh

   ePsyclinic is a Gurugram-based online counselling startup that is providing instant 1-on-1 therapy sessions with mental health professionals.

8. Ethereal Machines
   Team: Kaushik Mudda, Navin Jain
   Grant: INR 50 Lakh

   Bengaluru-based Ethereal Machines is a deeptech startup which is leveraging its technology to manufacture ventilator splitters. These splitters allow two patients to share a ventilator simultaneously with varying needs via differential pressure splitting. The product also prevents cross-contamination.

9. Fashinza
   Team: Abhishek Sharma, Pawan Gupta
   Grant: INR 20 Lakh

   Fashinza offers a scalable demand-supply matching platform by connecting PPE manufacturers with third-party logistic providers to meet the shortage of raw material.

10. Goodera
    Team: Goodera Team
    Grant: INR 30 Lakh

    Goodera is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) management platform that will raise funds for hospitals to buy personal protective equipment (PPE). ACT will add 10%-20% matching donations for any grant given through Goodera.

11. Healthians
    Team: Deepak Sahni
    Grant: INR 25 Lakh

    Gurugram-based healthtech startup Healthians is working on three solutions — at-home testing, drive-through testing and Covid testing kiosks — to help manage the current crisis.

12. HiMedia
    Team: Dr. Vishal Werke, Dr. Rajas Werke
    Grant: INR 1 Cr

    HiMedia is a bioscience company looking to facilitate mass scale Covid-19 testing. The company supplies viral transport media (VMT) used in the sample collection kits. It is also the largest supplier of ribonucleic acid (RNA) extraction kits. Both the solutions are important components in the testing processes.

13. HuWel Lifesciences
    Team: Shesheer Kumar, Dr. Rachana Tripathi
    Grant: INR 1 Cr

    HuWel is a healthtech company that manufacturers high-end molecular diagnostics kits. The company has developed a Covid-19 testing kit, which has been approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) as well.

14. Impact Guru
    Team: Piyush Jain, Khushboo Jain
    Grant: INR 40 Lakh

    The Mumbai-based crowdfunding startup is raising funds for personal protective equipment (PPE) for hospitals. The company is relying on crowdfunding, corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporates, rotary, and other clubs for the same. The fund will directly be given to PPE suppliers through B2B platform Moglix. The company is now looking to raise 5x to 10x the grant received from ACT.

15. Infinite Analytics
    Team: Akash Bhatia, Puru Botla
    Grant: INR 20 Lakh

    Infinite Solutions provides a tech solution, which allows authorities to track high-risk individuals based on the users’ historic proximity and time of contact with infected individuals.

16. Intugine
    Team: Harshit Shrivastava
    Grant: INR 24 Lakh

    Intugine is a Bengaluru-based location intelligence company which works on logistics and supply chain tracking. The company has so far tracked over 1 Lakh drivers every month for brands like Phillips, Mahindra, Flipkart, Arvind lifestyle etc. It is now using its developed technology to keep a track of the quarantined individuals.

17. Karkhana.io
    Team: Sonam Motwani
    Grant: INR 20 Lakh

    Mumbai-based Karkhana.io is leveraging technologies like 3D printing, injection moulding, machining, fabrication and design facility to produce PPEs — face shields, aerosol boxes, goggles and more. The startup is also offering tools to help others manufacture PPEs and other ICU equipment such as valves, connectors and ventilator parts.

18. Max Ventilators
    Team: AB Industries Ashok Patel
    Grant: INR 2 Cr

    Max Ventilators is working on a new advanced ventilator model, WeanX, which will be rolled out next month. Currently, the company has four existing models for sale, which include advanced intensive care use Proton Plus, a multipurpose intensive care equipment Respimax and small non-intensive use Neo.

19. MolBio Diagnostics
    Team: CEO Sriram Natarajan and CTO Chandrasekhar Nair
    Grant: INR 1 Cr

    Verna-based diagnostic company Molbio Diagnostics has developed a real time-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) machine and testing kits. RT-PCR is a nuclear-derived method of detecting the presence of specific genetic material including a virus. The machines are battery operated and can last up to 8 hours. Besides this, it can also conduct over 30 to 150 tests per day with a turn around time of 45 minutes.

20. Mozark
    Team: Kartik Raja, Chandrasekar Ramamoorthy
    Grant: INR 40 Lakh

    Mumbai-based Mozark provides telecom data analytics to the government through its open platform. Its solution allows authorities to identify the geography of the population, the density of infection, monitor densely visited public spaces and retrace infected people’s local travel history as well.

21. Mylab Discovery Solutions
    Team: Hasmukh Rawal, Shailendra Kawade
    Grant: INR 1 Cr

    Mylab Discovery Solutions is a biotechnology startup that has locally developed and manufactured a real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) kit, which can be used to detect Covid-19 infection. A single kit costs INR 80K and can test over 100 patients.

22. Nocca Robotics
    Team: Nikhil Kurele and a team of 15 domain expert from IIT Kanpur
    Grant: INR 25 Lakh

    Pune-based Nocca Robotics is developing and providing a low-cost invasive ventilator. A team of eight engineers from Nocca Robotics is currently working on it, alongside a team from IIT Kanpur and Indian Angel Network (IAN).

23. Project PCR Sample Pooling
    Team: University of Chicago Law School professor Anup Malani, Duke Sanford School of Public Policy associate professor Manoj Mohanan, and MapMyGenome founder Anu Acharya
    Grant: INR 53 Lakh

    Project PCR Sample Pooling works on reducing the cost of testing by 60% -80% by pooling RT-PCR samples, which would reduce the cost of the PCR machine. The company aims to identify hotspots in Karnataka.

24. Project StepOne
    Team: Qikwell’s Raghavendra Prasad, Pregbuddy’s Subhadeep Mondal, Times Internet’s Rahul Gupta, Recotap’s Ganesh Chithambalam
    Grant: INR 25 Lakh

    Project StepOne is powering state helpline numbers by leveraging an existing network of cloud telephony, queuing systems and doctors. The project also highlights that data generated from Interactive Voice Response (IVR) will provide valuable inputs to state administration on how and where to mobilise healthcare resources.

25. Sattva
    Team: Shruti Deora as project lead, Ojas Malpani, Abhishek Modi and Kanika Kandoi as a consultant, and Srikrishna Sridhar Murthy as an advisor
    Grant: INR 30 Lakh

    Sattva is a social impact consulting firm that provides services to ACT. The two entities — Sattva and ACT—  are working together to support project management, reporting, volunteer engagement, support, grantee responsive support, ecosystem engagement, and network amplification.

26. Specialist Teleconsultation
    Team: Cure.fit founder Ankit Nagori and Mukesh Bansal, Madan Somasundaram
    Grant: INR 30 Lakh

    The Specialist Teleconsultation project looks to provide healthcare teleconsultation for patients. If successful, the project will help reduce unnecessary visits to the hospital.

27. Zetwerk
    Team: Zetwerk’s cofounder Amrit Acharya, Srinath Ramakkrushnan
    Grant: INR 50 Lakh

    Zetwerk offers to augment the supply chain by reducing the time it takes for a product to hit the markets. The company is also connecting manufacturers to suppliers of raw materials for faster procurement.

It has already been a month since the government had first announced the Covid-19 lockdown on March 24, 2020. However, even the lockdown hasn’t been able to put an end to the rising number of positive cases across the country. Currently, India has confirmed over 24,774 and 784 deaths.