Filling the gaps: Indian startups bring know-how to COVID fight

Entrepreneurs are stepping in to direct patients to empty hospital beds and source oxygen and food supplies.

On a Tuesday night in mid-April, Shantanu Deshpande’s phone buzzed. A friend’s mother, infected with the coronavirus, was in urgent need of hospital treatment as a plunge in her blood oxygen level threatened her life. With India’s health system – where it exists – at a breaking point because of the surge in COVID-19 cases, no beds were available. Two hospitals had turned her away Deshpande – founder and chief executive of The Bombay Shaving Company which sells grooming products online – and some of his family and friends began calling hospitals and contacts to search for a facility that would treat his friend’s mother.