Coronavirus has taken away livelihoods of multiple startups while there are other who are taking this as an opportunity and adapting themselves with the situation to power through this. Mumbai-based B2B packaging startup, Bizongo has taken this as an opportunity and has started delivering PPE kits to the healthcare workers as well as the others in front line.
The company executives started to monitor the situation around the world and also worked on their platform to understand the demands of PPE products across the nation. Bizongo identified the three major elements that had to be mapped to facilitate the sourcing and supply- demand, supply & supply chain networks and a funding initiative. They readied their platform within 3 days to understand these key elements.
Their projections were correct to start working on the supply but it still became problematic because of movement restrictions due to lockdown. With that they also had to determine enough manufacturers for supply. They overcame this with their relationships with their existing manufacturers. They created a technical knowledge base on the standards and quality of the products to be produced for their manufacturers.
The plan was so well framed that they were ready to start supplying within 10 days. They have reached 65,000 frontline workers with 1.3 lakh PPE kits distributed in 170 public hospitals. They also managed funding through donations and ensured everything was genuine. Sachin Agarwal, co-founder of Bizongo appreciates all the SMEs who have been working towards manufacturing PPE even though it is not their forte.
The startup has the capacity to supply 50,000 PPE kits a day from the month of May. Sachin believes that the demand for PPEs won’t go down even in future and the demand may come from non-medical sectors. They already have started to plan future for these products as most of them are unbranded. The company has taken a good initiative in times of need and are proving to be an asset for the nation.