India is currently battling a major second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, with an alarming oxygen supply crisis. Hospitals are sending out SOS messages on social media platforms to get more oxygen supply, while doctors are breaking down as the situation worsens.
The government is facilitating oxygen transport through air, rail and road to bring up the supply of oxygen to cities across India. There’s also an acute shortage of oxygen concentrators and cylinders. In fact, Apollo Hospital’s joint managing director Dr Sangita Reddy has repeatedly stressed that India isn’t facing a shortage of oxygen, but is lacking an adequate number of tanks and cylinders.
And in the situation, lending a helping hand are India’s corporates. Earlier, Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani opened up his Jamnagar plant for supply of oxygen to Maharashtra, which remains the worst hit state in the country. He was joined by industrialists like Ratan Tata of the Tata Group and Naveen Jindal of Jindal Steel and Power, who are facilitating the supply of oxygen from their steel plants.
Now, startups, corporations and investors are looking to import oxygen cylinders and concentrators into India.
Indian conglomerate ITC announced today that it would airfreight oxygen cryogenic containers to help ease the crisis. “ITC Limited has tied up with Linde India Ltd. to airfreight 24 cryogenic ISO containers of 20 tons each from Asian countries for use by them to transport medical oxygen across the country,” the company said in a statement, on Saturday.
Startups, too, aren’t far behind. Logistics unicorn Delhivery’s chief executive officer Sahil Barua wrote on LinkedIn today that they are ‘flying charters into India with oxygen concentrators and other essential supplies and can build more capacity on demand’. Barua is already helping out people with oxygen concentrators on demand.
Recently, publicly listed online aggregator EaseMyTrip confirmed to Business Insider, that the founders of the firm are allocating resources to import oxygen concentrators into India. Rikant Pitti, the chief operating officer and co-founder of the company, wrote, “After 4 days of extensive research and audit, we were able to find legit suppliers to import 150 pieces of oxygen concentrators.”
Top Indian venture capitalist Shailendra Singh, of Sequoia Capital, recently took to Twitter to say that they are too looking for ways to import oxygen concentrators.
Meanwhile, French gas giant Air Liquide SA recently announced that it is diverting its oxygen supply from India’s industrial sector to hospitals in the country.
Soource : Business Insider
