COVID-19: IIT Bombay students, alumni start free ambulance service for needy

To address the acute shortage of ambulances amid rising COVID cases, the HelpNow initiative has aggregated over 700 vehicles that are deployed and reach within 15 to 20 minutes across Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and Bengaluru.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay has announced that it has started an ambulance service to provide free assistance to the poor, personnel in police and government employees. IIT Bombay ambulance service called HelpNow. has been initiated by Venkatesh Amrutwar, an IIT Bombay alumnus and two final-year students of the institute, Aditya Makkar and Shikar Agrawal.
While lauding the efforts of the IIT Bombay students, Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ said: “HelpNow, an IIT Bombay initiative, is a private ambulance service that provides free rides to the poor, the police and government employees.”

“Venkatesh Amrutwar, an IIT Bombay alumnus, with Aditya Makkar and Shikar Agrawal final year students started this initiative,” Mr Pokhriyal added.

HelpNow began with 12 ambulances in Mumbai in 2019. There are more than 350 ambulances in Mumbai alone now. To address the acute shortage of ambulances amid rising COVID cases, the HelpNow initiative has aggregated over 700 vehicles that are deployed and reach within 15 to 20 minutes across Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and Bengaluru.

“When we started, we had no idea that we would be dealing with the biggest pandemic the world has ever seen. The average arrival time of an ambulance is 50 minutes in India. It is not just the pandemic that has highlighted the issue, the problem existed before the pandemic started,” Shikar Agrawal earlier told media.

The IIT Bombay initiative is a pro-active approach in supporting the Government’s efforts in fighting the COVID-19 challenge. HelpNow call centres receive hundreds of calls each day. The founders said they have provided services at subsidized rates and even free for the needy to more than 30,000 patients. The service is open to people from other parts of the country looking for better healthcare in these four metro cities.

Read More: