Ayushi Mehta
Ola partnering up with GiveIndia to provide free oxygen concentrators
Ola Foundation, a relief fund set up to fight the global pandemic by the online cab and transportation service of India made an announcement on Monday, May 10, that it has partnered with an online donation platform- GiveIndia to contribute, help and provide the citizens with oxygen concentrators.
In this announcement, Ola also said that this service will be free through its app itself as a part of its philanthropy work.
Ola claimed that it will start rolling out this service from this week onwards in the city of Bangalore with an initial set of almost 500 oxygen concentrators. Although the service is starting only in Bangalore this week, soon it will scale up across all the major cities in the country with the capacity of almost 10,000 concentrators in coming few weeks.
The users can order the oxygen concentrators with just the app itself. To avail this offer, the users will just have to log into the Ola application on their Android or iOS device and request for the oxygen concentrators by just providing a few basic details. Once this request has been submitted, it will then be validated and Ola will then pick up the oxygen concentrator via one of its cab which is driven by drivers who will specially be trained for this and bring it to the required person’s doorstep.
After the patient has recovered its health and no longer require the oxygen concentrator anymore, Ola is also providing a pickup service. After requesting the pick-up, Ola will pick-up the machine and return it to GiveIndia where it will get sanitized and ready to send it to the next required person. Ola claims that this entire experience- from requesting and getting the concentrators till returning it back is seamless and the whole process is free of charge for all the users.
Bhavish Aggarwal, chairman and group chief executive officer (CEO), Ola, while making an announcement regarding this said, “With the O2ForIndia initiative in partnership with GiveIndia, we will provide free and easy access to oxygen concentrators to those in need. We hope this initiative brings much-needed support during these very difficult times and helps in mitigating the pain and the anxiety among those impacted.”
GiveIndia also made a comment on this. Atul Satija, CEO and Founder 2.0 at GiveIndia, when talking about this said- “…Through this initiative, we will provide oxygen concentrators to those recovering or isolating at home, right at their doorstep. We hope the easier access to oxygen will ease the distress of many patients.”
Recently, GiveIndia had said that it has launched an India Covid Response Fund (ICRF-2) to organise funds to tackle the increasing health crisis and for humanitarian aid such as monetary relief for low-income families of the deceased and food for the hungry. Last year, it had raised almost around ₹220 crore.