Indian IT Leaders Contribute for the Weaker Sections of the Workforce

Corona Virus outbreak has brought many kinds of hardships on the  low-income group workforce as well as on the smaller organisations and the poorer sections of the society.  Besides, the country does not have enough medical equipments  to deal with the patients. In such a situation, the IT sector leaders have come forward to provide financial support and other kinds of relief work which will benefit the low-income group workforce.

By now it is well known that the giants like Tata Sons & Tata Trust have donated 1500 Crores  to fight the Corona Virus and Azim Premji Foundation and the Wipro Group have together donated 1150 Cr for the purpose. However, when we search for the specific grants given to the  weaker sections of the workforce, it is difficult to  find many IT leaders who have donated for the low-income workforce. Because of this, those who have focused on this aspect are worth noticing.

The Giants and Their Shadows

Tata Sons & Tata Trust have donated 1500 Crores, out of which 500 Crores are dedicated to building health infrastructures, PPE for the health workers, ventilators and training the health workers and the general public.

"In this exceptionally difficult period,  I believe that urgent emergency resources need to be deployed to cope with the Covid 19 crisis, which is one of the toughest challenges the human race will face."

--Ratan Tata, Emeritus Chairman, Tata Sons & Tata Trust

The Wipro Group has donated 1150 Crores  for an  integrated action for a comprehensive on-the-ground response in specific areas to contain the outbreak.

The  Mahindra & Mahindra Group has begun to assemble face shields  at their Pithampur plant in MP. The plant which is used for making motorcycle is currently closed because of lockdown. The company is using it to make face shields. They are also distributing more than a thousand meal packets to the low income group people.

"Our Pitampur plant in a new avataar in its #fightagainstcorona serves 1000+ meal packets from our kitchen & began assembling Face Shields today."

--Prakash Wakankar,  Head, International Operations, Farm Equipment & Two Wheeler Businesses, Mahindra Group

Reliance Industries is also gearing up production of face masks to make 100,000 daily.

Nitrogen, a Mumbai based SaaS organisation,  has decided to offer a free access of its digital platform for three months for hospitals, grocery outlets and pharmacies.

"We can help by  increasing web performance; assisting websites with handling peak traffic and strengthening security."

--Manoj Bubna, Gautam Gurtoo, & Biren Shah , Co-Founders, Nitrogen

Magnanimous Move

In a magnanimous move, Larsen & Turbo has   set aside 500 Crores for   every month to support about 160,000 contract workers, to continue paying their wages during the ongoing lockdown and provide them food and basic amenities at labour camps, while maintaining the Covid-19 prevention and containment protocol.

“We are helping India’s fight against Covid-19 by way of immediate funding, and through a range of welfare initiatives, including converting our training schools into isolation centres. We are also leveraging our engineering and construction expertise to help the authorities deal with the crisis.”

--AM Naik, L&T group Chairman

This is despite the fact that the  company has stopped work at over 500 live projects.

Helping the Startups

A number of prominent industry leaders, mentors and venture capitalists have come together to form ACT,  the Action Covid Team Grant of 100 Crores.  The grant is aimed at helping out the small startups that have been badly hit by the Corona Virus outbreak lockdown. They are not in a position to sustain their workforce through the dwindiling of profit phase.

“Good to see well known technology leaders of India coming together in the fight against #COVID19 by encouraging innovations. Launch of Action COVID-19 Team (ACT) by them with a corpus of Rs.100 Crore to accelerate efficient and scalable solutions on COVID-19 is indeed commendable."

--Ravi Shankar Prasad,  Minister, Electronics & IT

While the Indian IT industry leaders are seen as rising to the occasion and helping in their own ways, the multinational companies in the IT sector, who make a fortune from the Indian market, are  conspicuous by their  absence from the relief measures landscape, especially in the realm of extending reliefs for the low-income workforce.