Investors, Startup Founders in India Pool $13M To Fund Projects That Fight Coronavirus

More than 150 investors and entrepreneurs in India are funding dozens of projects in a bid to help millions better combat the COVID-19 epidemic and help the nation's booming startup ecosystem withstand the economic devastation the pandemic has caused. From a report: The investors said they have contributed 1 billion Indian rupees -- or $13 million -- of their own money to the ACT Grants initiative, which was unveiled late last month. The group -- which includes several prominent industry figures, including Nandan Nilekani, Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Flipkart's Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Oyo's Ritesh Agarwal, Udaan's Sujeet Kumar, Freshworks' Girish Mathrubootham, CRED's Kunal Shah and Times Internet's Miten Sampat -- has funded 32 projects to date. These projects span six themes, including solutions that could help curtail the spread of the COVID-19 disease, development of testing and detection kits, building medical equipment such as ventilators and taking care of mental health. The group came together last month when India had just begun to see cases of the coronavirus disease. [...] There have been 29,435 known cases of coronavirus in India, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare. As of Tuesday evening, at least 886 people had died.

That's what we have needed!

[Futurepower(R)]

That's what we have needed: Recognition of ALL the issues, and working toward resolving them.

Re:

[transporter_ii]

Yes. I got modded down for suggesting something like this. At the top of my list is a cheap test for the virus that could be done rapidly, is really cheap, and hopefully affordable enough that lots of people could afford it. I would like to see it so affordable a fair amount of people could have one at home.

Testing has been our weak link in America.

Businesses should be willing to subsidize this, since we see that not having a test can cause trillions of dollars of economic damage in a shutdown.

Elon Musk sho

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[jellomizer]

Currently, we are in a state of not my problem, if it is my problem then someone else is the cause and they have to fix it.

The American Response from Covid-19 hasn't been, lets all of us chip in and work out the issues. Like during WWI and WWII, 9/11, or other cases where there was a major problem.
This time we have a lot of finger-pointing and telling others to do something about it, while I sit here and suffer.

It is Trump's fault, it is China's Fault, it is the Governers fault. We want the government to g

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[jellomizer]

And a rather small investment, enough to get press, but not enough to really hit these companies' bottom lines.

13 Million is rather unimpressive amount. Perhaps it if was from one of the companies, but from a bunch of companies, it just seems like a stop calling me donation.

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[DontBeAMoran]

If SHTF in the USA, make sure you're prepared [youtube.com].

$13 million?

[rsilvergun]

Not to complain or anything, but India's GDP is 2.8 trillion. This kind of "Drop in the Bucket" crap is why the pandemic is and continues to be such a problem. We throw token amounts of resources at problem solving and trillions go to bail out big investment banks. Meanwhile those investors are busy telling us to go back to work before it's safe while they self isolate on private islands...

Fuck Austerity.

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[Aighearach]

13 miiiiiiiiiiilian smackaroonies! That's a lot of hand sanitizer.