Startups come together to 'Rebuild Uttarakhand', because a lot remains to be done

Natural calamities surely make for great news material. And the best thing is that they keep coming and going. But the rubble they leave behind isn't of interest to anyone. Uttarakhand was all over in the news during the calamity (and we also contributed towards it) but now most seem to have moved on. Moving on is how humans are wired but it's always heartening to see when efforts like 'Rebuild Uttarakhand' surface.

Initiated by a few startups coming together, Rebuild Uttarakhand is looking to keep the momentum going and take more steps to help the state. Mandeep Dhillon, a professional mountaineer & founder of a Delhi based tourism startup Synapses set up a base camp in Uttarakhand along with his friends to help relief & rehabilitation camps in Uttarakhand in June. This is where he met Rajesh mane at a Weekend Ventures' event in august and they got talking.

They got up a site and started a campaign which invites contributions from startups, individuals and anyone else who's looking to help.

We got in touch with Rajesh to know about the things that are already happening and how people can chip in:

Help India 2013 has engaged 20+ mountaineers to transport ration in 100+ villages destroyed in areas of Uttarkashi. Everyday, they are walking 20km & delivering food in relief camps. However they are on shortage of funds to procure more ration, Ms. Kiran Mahajan from Holland has come to India to handle fund raising campaign in India.

Social Drones & Airpix, drone startups from Mumbai have engaged their drones, for aerial surveillance, navigation in Uttarkashi areas, they are soon implementing transportation of medicines & portable water filter across relief camps.

Weekend Ventures has recently conducted hackathons across Mumbai, B’lore & Delhi, supported by Kelsaa91 springboards and Jaaga where 6 applications were developed by the hackers, one of the application is a telecom version of google person finder.

Deliver with me startup is accepting in kind help from metros across India & channeling it effectively in Uttarkashi areas, the startup also provided technical support during the hackathon.

Media venture – 48 hours film project is providing media content, animation for spreading awareness about what happened in Uttarakhand &and why they still need our attention and support to rise.

Aeolis – a weather forecasting venture from Netherlands is providing real time satellite support. They have a developers team working on the realtime data and are inviting more developers to join the campaign.

A rural development , 80G certified NGO – Anhad Sewa Trust is providing fund raising support, silicon valley based startup – Instamojo is offering their network & payment gateway to make fund raising easier & accessible across social media across countries.

The team is launching a crowdfunding campaign to raise 15L to procure more ration, medical help & constant aerial – drone support. Know more about the mission and contribute in anyway you can via Rebuild Uttarakhand. You can follow the movement on Twitter @RiseUttarakhand and on Facebook as well.