IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday lauded tech leaders and startups for coming together to set up a Rs 100 crore grant to back innovations to overcome COVID-19.

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This week, several startup founders, independent advisors and others in the tech industry set up the Action COVID-19 Team (ACT). Tech leaders such as Nandan Nilekani, Sanjeev Bickchandani, Deep Kalra, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Nachiket Mor, Mukesh Bansal, Kunal Shah and Abhiraj Singh Bhal etc. are also associated with this initiative.

ACT has been created with a Rs 100 crore grant to accelerate the efforts of capital-efficient, scalable solutions focused on COVID-19. This corpus has seen contributions from members of venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital India, Accel, Kalaari Capital, Matrix Partners, Nexus Ventures, SAIF Partners, Lightspeed Partners and many others.

The IT Minister tweeted, “Good to see well known technology leaders of India coming together in the fight against #COVID19 by encouraging innovations. Launch of Action COVID-19 Team(ACT) by them with a corpus of Rs.100 Crore to accelerate efficient & scalable solutions on COVID-19 is indeed commendable.”

The objective of ACT is to empower NGOs, SMEs, startups and other platforms that are harnessing technology to create large-scale impact in their fight against COVID-19.

The grants will focus on the following areas:

1. Prevention of COVID-19 spread: All ideas that help reduce the spread of the disease, including digital tools, social distancing apps, contract tracing, telemedicine, education etc.

2. Scaling Testing: All ideas which can help India scale testing for COVID-19, including new testing protocols, multi-stage testing frameworks, scaling current PCR testing capacity etc.

3. Disease management at home: All initiatives where patients are supported via tele-medicine, provided healthcare services at home and guided to recover at home unless critically needed to go to hospitals

4. Enhanced support for healthcare workers & hospitals: All ideas that scale the availability of protective gear for healthcare workers, augment hospital capacity etc.

5. Management of critically ill patients: All ideas that help expand ICU capacity, including trained staff, ventilators, oxygen supply, beds, tools for tracking capacity etc.

6. Support for mental health: All ideas that provide mental health support to families of patients and the broader community

ACT looks to seed over 50 intitiaves through the grant. A 25-member team has been formed to evaluate projects.

ACT will be managed by United Way Worldwide, a non-profit, ISO-certified, FCRA and 80-G compliant organization - renowned globally for its efforts across health, education and financial stability.