Meesho’s COVID heroes are helping those in need — with home cooked meals, driving plasma donations, and building brilliant tech that speeds up resource verification processes
We are living through unprecedented times — again. As all of India struggles to power through this second and much more devastating wave of COVID — 19, many individuals are investing all the time and effort they can into helping those in need.
At Meesho too, many of our colleagues are working relentlessly either volunteering, donating or amplifying information about COVID resources and medical aid. And we are proud to feature some of our Meesho COVID heroes, who outside of their full time jobs and personal responsibilities, are doing everything in their power to fight COVID.
From Meeshoites who are running plasma donation drives to those who have built verification tools that filter out expired and fake leads about the medical supply, read on to know more about these initiatives and how you can contribute too.
Covid Verified
Volunteer for: Verifying leads for medical supply, hospital beds, and oxygen cylinders on Twitter.
This crowdsourcing tool is the brainchild of Shikhar Saxena, Senior Product Manager, who tested positive for COVID towards the end of April. Shikhar, like many of us, was feeling helpless and powerless watching the situation in India getting worse by the hour. He joined hands with Siddharth Bulia, SDE — III (Backend) — Tech, who too, was looking for ways to help out those in need, and together they created Covid Verified, where volunteers can verify tweets with updates about COVID resources.
While Shikhar sketched out what should be present in Version 1, Siddharth started implementing them right away. With the help of his friend Devesh Agnihotri who helped develop the frontend of the V1 website quickly, Siddharth worked on the backend. They then worked on an extension through which users could mark tweets as verified/expired directly from Twitter. During this phase, SDE — III (Frontend) — Tech Nitin Dev also played a significant role.
At this point, several more Meeshoites joined in to help, like Nikita Dawda, Director- Business who provided quick feedback on the product, SDE-IV (Backend) — Tech, Siddharth Gupta, who added more features in the backend and gave valuable feedback as well. Akshay Dhankar, SDE-II (Frontend) — Tech, worked on the website and added more features, while SDE-III (Frontend) — Tech Rahul Sharma worked on improving the extension further, and Akshay Gupta from Devops team helped set up the infrastructure.
Even Meesho leadership played a role in developing this tool with Pratik Kumar, Engineering Manager — Tech, helped with API keys of Twitter to start getting Twitter feed, and Meesho CTO Sanjeev Barnwal and VP Engineering Samir Ranjan Samir Ranjan encouraged the team to use Meesho’s infrastructure to host the website.
After the initial launch, many Meeshoites have volunteered to contact the leads and do the verification with Nitish Duggal from tech having personally called to verify over a 100 tweets. Meanwhile, Product Analyst Sujith Cheedela and Program Manager — Fulfillment and Experience Akshay Anvekar are working hard to increase the tool’s presence online.
Currently Covid Verified has a six-member team focusing on social media outreach and eight engineers working on the tech to optimise the tool. They are also working with various volunteer organisations to help speed up their verification process. Simply put, this selfless project that started with Siddharth and Shikhar is a brilliant portrayal of two Meesho core values: Speed Over Perfection and Thinking 10X. And above all, rising to the occasion when it counts!
Contact: You can sign up to volunteer (whether or not you work at Meesho) for Covid Verified team by clicking here: https://chat.whatsapp.com/BufbeFdnZSZ20ipS9WAbnp You cal also follow all the updates on Twitter and Instagram.
Quarantine Tiffin
Volunteer for: Simple home cooked meals for Covid positive patients.
A recovered Covid patient, Manager — Employer Branding, Mangala Dilip had the good fortune of having access to a hospital bed and best possible medical care just as the second wave hit India. Once recovered, Mangala understood how important it was to extend that much needed helping hand whether it is to run donation drives to give that financial nudge to many foundations and individuals working tirelessly towards Covid relief or to even provide something as basic as a nutritious home cooked meal for Covid positive folks.
She, along with her friends who co-founded the social justice collective, Sabudana Things, started Quarantine Tiffin, a volunteer-led community kitchen initiative that aggregates home chefs and helps distribute home cooked meals to Covid-impacted families, among impoverished and unprivileged communities across Bangalore.
It’s been a few days since May 1, 2021 when the service started, and Quarantine Tiffins is happy to have gathered around 16 home chefs from different parts of Bangalore who have managed to supply homemade lunch for residents of slums in places such as Byatarayanapura, Sanjay Nagara and Jakkur.
The volunteers of this initiative have been working relentlessly towards this cause, having figured out everything from the food distribution system to planning for food delivery pickups and drop offs, and organising nutritious meals. If you can volunteer with your time and are up for cooking simple meals for those in need, you can volunteer with Quarantine Tiffins, and if you can’t, then do donate towards the cause as those who are helping distribute and delivering the food are being paid for their efforts.
Mangala is also running a parallel donation drive where she is helping out families with no financial means to access hospitals, buy medicines, oximeters, thermometers and oxygen.
Contact: Donate on Google Pay: +91 9176125279 and sign up as a volunteer home cook by calling +91 7400320383. Google pay Mangala @9972952934 (please mention covid funds in the description). The photos of bills and supply to this drive can be accessed on this drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DfR4o0UYfN9uRUMx5ee8MeGdjRaXhCc6?usp=sharing
Plasma For India
Volunteer for: Donating plasma if you have recovered from Covid in the past
Covid’s second wave has had a devastating effect on all of us — with everyone knowing at least one family member or friend or a colleague who tested positive. And at times like this, we can do with all the helping hands we have access to.
Several Meeshoites from the Business, Tech and Product org have partnered with Lions Club Sanjay Nagar to create a cross team plasma warrior force.
Nikita Dawda and Senior Category Manager Megha Mathur first came upon the idea when they realised that getting as many people as they can to donate plasma is one of the best ways to save the lives of COVID positive patients. They are now joined by a lot more Meeshoites who are all committed to increasing the number of plasma donations and saving as many lives as possible.
Plasma For India has currently had 300 unique donor registrations and~40 units of plasma successfully donated at blood banks and partner hospitals. The initiative, which started in Bangalore, has now scaled up to 3 other cities and the team has expanded from the initial two now 24 volunteers across India.
If you have tested Covid positive in the last 120 days, and have recovered since 28 days (and have a negative report to show for it), have never been pregnant (women only), do not have diabetes, thyroid or high blood pressure, are below 65 years of age and below 55 kgs, then you are eligible to donate plasma.
Plasma For India has helpfully provided a network of hospitals that are accepting walk-ins for plasma donations, and volunteers will hand hold you through the donation process to make your experience smooth.
If you are eligible, please sign up for plasma donation, and more importantly, amplify and spread the good word.
Contact: To sign up, fill up this form: https://forms.gle/CEv9ELq169wf7oh36 and follow @plasmaforindia on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/plasmaforindia/ for the latest updates on this drive and how you can donate.
