As COVID Crisis Surges in India, Tech Leaders Join Relief Funding Effort in a Big Way
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Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. A health care volunteer helps a COVID patient.
A second wave of COVID-19 is overwhelming India’s healthcare systems, with the number of infections pushing past 22 million by early May—nearly half of all new cases globally.
With the number of deaths now approaching nearly 250,000—which many report as an undercount —urgent calls for oxygen, ventilators and hospital beds are flashing across mainstream and social media, along with devastating images of inundated hospitals and burning funeral pyres. It’s a grim echo of the scenes we saw in New York and other hot spots last year, and a reminder that the pandemic is far from over.
The appeals for support aren’t falling on deaf ears. Crowdfunding site GiveIndia relaunched its COVID-19 response funds, raising more than $6.8 million to date, for a combination of oxygen supply, cash support, and food and rations. Indiaspora, a nonprofit community of leaders from the Indian diaspora, launched a new ChaloGive fundraising campaign, which has raised nearly $2.7 million. The Rockefeller Foundation approved $3.5 million in emergency aid this month in response to the current wave in India. More numbers will certainly roll in as the full picture of the donor response becomes clearer.
We’ve also seen several notable announcements from large donors, particularly from the tech industry, where a number of Indian expats holding CEO and other high-ranking leadership positions are giving generously, advocating for coordinated responses, and bringing the powerful resources of their businesses to bear.
On April 25, New Delhi-born Vinod Khosla pledged $10 million to GiveIndia, which bills itself as India’s largest and most trusted donation platform. In a Twitter post announcing the support, the venture capitalist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems expressed a willingness to step up personally to increase the availability of medical oxygen and supplies to Indian hospitals and NGOs. He encouraged groups to reach out directly, while entreating others to join him.
Another tweet followed on May 2, as the second wave reached 300,000 new cases a day. Watching requests pour in for thousands of oxygen concentrators, ventilators and ICU beds, the Kholsa family added another $10 million to GiveIndia, this time as a match. His tweet implored others to realize the gravity of the situation, “We need to do more urgently.”
Chennai-born Sunar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary, Google, also tweeted a message of help and concern on April 25: “Devastated to see the worsening COVID crisis in India,” he wrote, pledging $18 million in total support from “Google & Googlers” to GiveIndia and UNICEF.
Sanjay Gupta, Google’s country head and vice president, India, said the new funding included two grants totaling $2.6 million from Google.org. One funded cash assistance to hard-hit families through GiveIndia. The other allowed UNICEF to meet urgent needs like oxygen, medical supplies and testing equipment.
Gupta told BBC News that Google aims to help families facing dire consequences meet everyday expenses and speed equipment to where it’s needed most.
An impressive number of Googlers also donated through the company’s employee giving program. By late April, 900,000 employees made contributions totaling $500,000, a number that’s still growing. Other interventions included in-kind proprietary vaccine awareness initiatives, information products and public health information campaigns.
Over at Microsoft, CEO Satya Nadella, who was born in Hyderabad, took to Twitter the same day, to say he was heartbroken by the current situation. Nadella pledged that Microsoft would “use its voice, resources and technology to aid relief efforts, and support the purchase of critical oxygen concentration devices.”
Microsoft Philanthropies joined the Global Task Force on Pandemic Response as a founding member, and joined other companies to finance 1,000 ventilators for Indian hospitals, and 25,000 oxygen concentration devices.
Microsoft employees also actively tapped the employee giving program, raising $3 million for organizations working on the ground, like Oxfam India and UNICEF, including the corporate match.
The response also builds on the partnerships Microsoft Philanthropies developed over the past year as part of its overall COVID response in India, supporting humanitarian aid organizations, first-responder nonprofits and front-line worker protections.
The wider industry is also stepping up. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey committed a total of $15 million toward relief efforts on May 10, to three NGOs. Ten million will go to CARE; $2.5 million is committed to Aid India and the Hindu faith-based humanitarian organization, Sewa International, to aid interventions from emergency medical equipment to temporary COVID care centers.
Other leaders have banded together. The Chandigarh-born entrepreneur and Apptio CEO Sunny Gupta is one of a group of Seattle-based tech leaders that formed a group called Seattle for India, which hopes to raise $10 million for the unfolding crisis from the more than 75,000 Indian Americans in the area. Two million has poured in already.
As with many others, the ties that bind Gupta to the crisis are personal. Gupta’s father-in-law recently succumbed to the virus, and both parents have tested positive.
Look for the philanthropic response to grow along with those bonds, as expats reach back to help. Nisant Pandey, CEO of the American India Foundation, said he feels the crisis “has kind of sparked or triggered a fresh and a new emotional affiliation to India.”
