Rallying India's startups to win the battle against COVID-19

To rally innovative startups working on out-of-the-box solutions, C-CAMP launched the C-CAMP COVID-19 Innovations Deployment Accelerator or C-CIDA.

Monday May 04, 2020 , 3 min Read

Welcome to Lockdown 3.0. We're all still at home, the coronavirus is still very real, and we all have to fight it together – by staying apart. This time, the Centre tries to bring about some sense of 'normal' by regulating activities based on risk profiling of districts, slotting them into three zones - Red, Orange, and Green. Business activities are frozen, confusion, uncertainty, and struggles seem to be par for the course.

While doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers are dealing with the pandemic first-hand, others are joining the fight in their own ways. Take, 14-year-old Krishn Gupta, for example, who built a ‘No-Touch Hand Sanitiser Dispenser’. After all, innovations come in all shapes and sizes. And right now, we need all the innovations we can get.

To rally innovative startups working on out-of-the-box solutions, C-CAMP launched the C-CAMP COVID-19 Innovations Deployment Accelerator or C-CIDA. In the last one month, it received 1,000 applications from startups across India innovating and building solutions to fight the pandemic. It has so far selected 30 startups that are working across solutions for diagnostics, rapid testing kits, sample transportation to even working on finding the right drugs to cure it.

Last week, we told you about our new series Money Matters with Shradha Sharma, where experts, entrepreneurs, and investors break down finance for us. In its fifth episode, Mohandas Pai, Chairman of Aarin Capital and Manipal Global Education, and Siddarth Pai, Founding Partner of 3one4 Capital, discussed how India can create 100 unicorns in order to realise our dream of achieving a $5 trillion economy.

Today, in our sixth episode, Nikhil Kamath, Co-Founder and CIO of Zerodha, will join YourStory Founder and CEO Shradha Sharma to answer all your questions around trading in the times of coronavirus.

Find out if you should invest in these turbulent times. Join us LIVE at 4:00 pm here and keep your questions ready.

Quote of the day:

“With effective board meetings, founders can strategically manoeuvre their businesses to the pinnacles of triumph, and achieve those end goals that everyone ultimately desires to see.”