Let India breathe — A step towards building a sustainable oxygen supply across India
We at Paytm are humbled to share that our Foundation will be setting up oxygen plants in over 12 cities as hospitals across India face oxygen shortage amid the gruesome second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. These oxygen plants will be directly installed at hospitals, which would then serve the oxygen needs for the entire hospital. We have also sourced over 21,000 Oxygen Concentrators that will be sent to government hospitals, COVID care facilities, private hospitals, nursing homes as well as Resident Welfare Associations by mid-May.
Oxygen plants are devices that make it possible to produce medical oxygen from ambient air while simultaneously supplying the gas to multiple beds. We are thankful to our users who helped us raise INR 10 crore to support our #OxygenForIndia initiative. Keeping up with our promise, we have more than doubled the donation amount bringing it to a total of INR 20 Crore. We are working with other prominent organisations including Elevation Capital and the American Indian Foundation to make this possible. The donation garnered under the initiative will be used to purchase Oxygen Concentrators as well as oxygen plants, which cost anywhere between INR 50 lakh to INR 1 Crore each.
We are also in dialogue with various State Governments and hospitals in India to get their approval to set up these oxygen plants; once purchased, the oxygen plants will be provided free of cost to Government hospitals by our Foundation.
Paytm spokesperson said , “Before economic growth, we need to think about the sustainability of humans. While Oxygen Concentrators are good for short term support, we realised that oxygen plants could provide our healthcare system with larger support. Hence, we decided to direct our donations to build oxygen plants at government hospitals. We are overwhelmed with the collective effort and support citizens of the country have shown to help pacify the ordeal caused by the pandemic’s 2nd wave. We are optimistic that with the right resources and empathy for our fellow countrymen, we will not only survive this crisis but also come out stronger.”
We understand that our aim of saving as many lives as possible, will come when all of us come together. So, the Paytm Foundation is also supporting other start-ups, organisations and enterprises to source OCs from the international market. This will help minimize the timeline for logistical requirements while ensuring that hospitals & other COVID care centres receive the much needed OCs as soon as possible. The entire sourcing, regulatory approvals, and delivery will be managed by the Foundation, while the other organizations will only have to pay for the cost of the OCs that they order.
