Home of Hope, IIT Kanpur Send COVID-19 Aid to India

The Indian American-founded HOH nonprofit has sent medical aid to India for Covid in collaboration with IIT-Kanpur alumni. Above: Health workers giving the vaccine to people in their own cars during a drive-in-vaccination at a shopping mall due in Kolkata June 4, 2021. (Kuntal Chakrabarty/ IANS photo)

India-West Staff Reporter

The Indian American-founded Home of Hope nonprofit, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, June 5 announced that it had helped members of the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur alumni in sending aid to India to combat the COVID-19 surge ravaging the country.

The city of Kanpur wasted no time in galvanizing their resources and contacts. They contacted HOH legal counsel Annie Dandavati’s husband Dinesh Chandra, a fellow Kanpur IIT alumnus, who introduced Kanpur Parivartan Forum to HOH, the news release said.

Under the guidance and leadership of founder and IIT alumnus Anil Gupta, and led by IIT alumni Deepak Bhagat, Gunjan Bagla and Dinesh Chandra, HOH partnered with KPF to quickly raise funds with the immediate objective of purchasing 200 oxygen concentrators and dispatching to the people of the city of Kanpur, the HOH release said.

Within weeks of the funds being raised in the U.S. via HOH, Kanpur Parivartan Forum quickly placed an order for 80 concentrators – 5L and 10L. As of now, 60 oxygen concentrators have reached Kanpur for distribution, the release noted.

IITK has gone on to fund other initiatives to provide oximeters, concentrators, and BiPAP machines to be deployed in various hospitals, as well as to create Oxygen Lounges for providing care in hospitals and self-isolation in homes, it said.