Omidyar Network India announces Rs ~26 crore ($ 3.5 million) funding towards collaborative efforts focused on Covid relief
Omidyar Network India today announced that it has secured Rs ~13 crore ($1.75 million) each for Give Foundation, India's most trusted online donation platform and United Way Bengaluru, a leading collaborative non-profit platform.
The funds will be used by Give Foundation to:
- Help strengthen the capacity of institutions, healthcare staff, volunteers, and care givers to enable a more effective response that maximises available infrastructure. This may include development of protocols/standards etc.
- Focus on rural areas that have been severely underserved
- Encourage retail donors to contribute to the Covid relief effort by matching their funding
United Way Bengaluru, through its partnership with ACT Grants (a movement by India's start-up community to combat Covid-19) will use the funding for:
- Purchase and distribution of oxygen concentrators across India
- Financing the set-up of Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) plants to help with demand for oxygen
- Combining telemedicine and home healthcare solutions to help decongest hospitals, and
- Helping support the national vaccination effort
Speaking about its contribution to the organisations, Omidyar Network India’s Managing Director Roopa Kudva said, “United Way Bengaluru in partnership with ACT Grants and Give Foundation are well placed to create immediate and widespread impact during a situation where time is of the essence. All these platforms together are harnessing the power of collaboration and collective action to respond to the crisis. They have shown great agility in galvanising significant financial resources and high-quality talent as well as strong execution capabilities to deploy funds effectively at a scale required to battle the pandemic. By partnering with them, we hope to help address the urgent and critical issues facing those most vulnerable in the second wave of the pandemic.”
Speaking about the collaboration, Rajesh Krishnan, Executive Director, United Way Bengaluru, said, “Henry Ford famously said –‘Coming together is a beginning, Keeping together is progress and Working together is success’. I cannot of think of anything better as an example to this adage than Omidyar Network India coming together with United Way Bengaluru to support ACT Grants in addressing this crisis. The empathetic response of Omidyar Network India to the current crisis is a fine balance of addressing immediate and long-term needs. UWBe with its motto of ‘mobilizing the caring power of communities’ brings in the required talent, financial resources besides ensuring compliance at all stages of project management. We hope this shared commitment helps in fighting the second wave of the pandemic.”
“We are extremely grateful to Omidyar Network India for their significant contribution to our Covid relief efforts and humbled by the trust placed in our response to the situation on the ground. This fierce wave of the pandemic has sadly exposed the inadequacies in our health infrastructure and the need for capacity building of our hospitals. But now the virus is in villages as well and we need to increase our focus on rural India to mitigate as much loss as possible,” added Atul Satija, CEO and Founder 2.0 of GiveIndia, the online fundraising platform of Give Foundation.
In addition to the above, Omidyar Network India launched a Rapid Response Funding Initiative (RRFI) as an immediate response to the pandemic in March 2020. RRFI provided funding of an aggregate of Rs. 10.75 crore to 67 organizations at the forefront of the response to COVID, particularly those working in the area of direct relief. It also provided ‘Solidarity Grants’ for 11 of its grantees amounting to approximately Rs. 13.6 crore late last year.
As a medium-term response to Covid-19, Omidyar Network India continues with its ReSolve Initiative, for tackling the long-standing issues of supporting migrant workers and empowering MSMEs. So far, it has invested in lighthouse projects like the Punjab government’s partnership with GAME to improve the Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs and the Jan Sahas Migration Hub.
Photo credit: GiveIndia
