Start-up community helps in COVID-19 testing; supplies over 3.5 million kits

‘Action Covid-19 Team’ or ACT Grants, the Rs 100 crore grant set up by VC partners and the start-up community, has delivered over 3.5 million testing kits across 8 states in India.

With a footprint in 22 Indian states for providing COVID-19 solutions, the grant has collected samples and provided testing kits to various states across India through their grantee companies such as 1MG, Housejoy, Healthians, MyLab, Molbio, Huwel and HiMedia among others.

1MG, Housejoy, and Healthians have collected a cumulative of 50,000+ samples so far through the booths deployed in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, New Delhi, Haryana, Telangana, and Maharashtra.

As part of the testing track of ACT Grants, 1MG, Healthians, and Housejoy have supported the government by leveraging their core business strengths.

Healthians launched a three-pronged approach to holistic and scalable COVID-19 testing through home sample collection, as well as innovative ways like drive-through and walk-in kiosks and mobile kiosk vehicles.

Housejoy brought partner firms, Govt. of Karnataka, KSRTC to start Covid19 testing inside Mobile clinics (KSRTC buses remodeled as clinics) in police stations, societies, and other government bodies.

1MG innovated through solutions like a booth and mobile van, which had partitions to protect their collection staff better and to allow PPE usage for multiple collections thereby reducing the cost of the test.

Additionally, Qure.ai also supported ACT by working across 09 BMCs and chest scanned more than 6,000 patients so far to detect and supplement treatment for COVID-19.

ACT had also initially conducted a random sampling through pool testing to find the spread of the COVID-19 in the population in Karnataka and Mumbai. Over 1,000 samples have been collected in Karnataka and over 4,000 samples collected in Mumbai.

Sudipto Sannigrahi, Testing Track Lead, ACT Grants, said, “At a time when COVID-19 cases in India are increasing rapidly, testing is key towards identifying patients and starting immediate treatment and quarantine. The start-ups 1MG, Healthians, and Housejoy have ramped up the testing process in India while working with numerous state-governments.  The true extent of the coronavirus pandemic’s spread can only be gauged by widespread testing. We plan to work with more Governments and Foundation to help increase the reach of testing in the country.”

The grantee companies focus their testing capacities towards Pourakarmikas, Migrant Labourers, Medical Professionals, General Public –Urban & Rural Population in SEC C or below and Healthcare workers.

A coalition of top VCs, start-up community founders, entrepreneurs, investors, and other industry veterans, ACT team has come together to provide grants between INR 1 lakh and INR 10 crore to start-ups and initiatives that are harnessing technology to create a large-scale impact in the detection, prevention, and eradication of COVID -19.

Initiatives picked by grants for support will be provided financial support, guidance, access to networks, mentorship as well as resources to support their fight against COVID-19 in India. Its mission is to seed and empower teams that are harnessing technology to create a large-scale impact on the detection, prevention, and eradication of Covid-19.