A founder-led response to a once-in-a-generation crisis.
ACT was born in the early days of the pandemic, when India's startup community — founders, operators, venture capitalists, civil-society leaders — chose to organise a coordinated response instead of waiting for someone else to act. Across 2020 and 2021 we raised and deployed hundreds of crores of risk-tolerant capital into the interventions that mattered most in real time: oxygen and ventilation supply chains, vaccine logistics, frontline-worker safety, tele-medicine, mental-health support and relief for the most vulnerable households. The platform that exists today is a direct extension of what that response taught us about what tech-led venture philanthropy can do at scale.
₹100 Cr
Raised in the first wave
₹464 Cr
Additional capital raised in the Delta wave
33
States & UTs reached
100+
Volunteers mobilised across both waves
Creating The First Wave Of Change
March 2020 — a collective rallying behind public health
In March 2020, ACT came into being to help India's public healthcare ecosystem absorb the first shock of the COVID-19 pandemic. The collective rallied venture capitalists, founders, operators and civil-society leaders behind a single ambition — raise capital fast, deploy it where it mattered most, and use the speed of the start-up ecosystem to support the public system under the heaviest pressure it had ever faced.
Inside a few weeks the taskforce had raised ₹100 Cr, mobilised more than a hundred volunteers and stitched together 37 strategic partnerships — all aimed at deploying capital-efficient, scale-ready, tech-led solutions that could keep pace with how fast the pandemic was moving.
Through the first wave, ACT supported 54 such solutions that touched more than 49 million lives across 30 states and Union Territories. The grant-making spanned digital triage and dashboards, non-invasive ventilation, mobile clinics, mental- health helplines, financial relief for low-income families and tele-medicine — wherever a working intervention could be scaled with risk-tolerant capital.
In the field
A few of the solutions we backed
Real-time pandemic dashboards for state governments
A digital dashboard rolled out across five state governments — geofencing of quarantined patients, cluster analysis of the spread, CDR-based location tracking and predictive modelling for spatial spread.
SAANS PRO non-invasive ventilation and CPAP helmet
SAANS PRO — a non-invasive ventilation system that supported moderately severe hypoxemic COVID patients — and a CPAP helmet that prevented infection from patient exhalation and cough, both deployed where critical-care capacity ran short.
Digital essentials and benefits for low-income communities
Digital infrastructure that gave citizens in low-income communities a way to access financial relief and the essentials they needed to ride out lockdowns and the months that followed.
Mobile COVID clinics in partnership with Bangalore's local government
Housejoy Care launched in partnership with Bengaluru's local administration, transforming four KSRTC buses into mobile COVID clinics offering subsidised blood, sugar, blood-pressure and COVID testing.
…and many more solutions supported across the first wave.
A Snapshot Of Our Impact (2020)
The first wave — in numbers
230K+
COVID tests conducted
70K+
Medical personnel trained
₹17.3 Mn+
Granted for COVID treatment research
8.5 Mn
N95 masks commissioned
180K+
Supported with mental-health needs
450+
HFNC devices deployed
56 Mn+
Supported with tele-medicine
85K
Patient records maintained
₹170 Mn+
Worth of government benefits distributed
Fighting The Deadly Delta Wave
2021 — the Delta variant and a second, larger response
When the Delta variant hit in 2021, the scale of what was needed changed overnight. ACT raised an additional ₹464 Cr and worked alongside multiple government bodies, more than 70 NGOs and 50+ strategic partners to push relief into vulnerable communities across 33 states and Union Territories.
The focus widened beyond oxygen and ventilation to affordable homecare — supporting training programmes for ASHA workers — and, as vaccines began to arrive, into vaccination drives for high-risk occupation groups inside low-income communities. The response looked less like a single intervention and more like a portfolio of fast-moving, parallel programmes coordinated across the country.
A Snapshot Of Our Impact (2021)
The Delta wave — in numbers
41K+
Oxygen concentrators donated
550K+
Vaccine doses commissioned
347 Mn+
Reached through vaccine-hesitancy programmes
106
PSA plants commissioned
176K+
COVID care kits commissioned
3.5K+
Hospitals reached
2.3K+
BiPAPs delivered
145K+
Trainings organised for frontline workers
350+
Volunteers mobilised
COVID Response Collective
Anchors
The operators, investors and civil-society leaders who anchored ACT's COVID response from the first wave onwards.
Aarti Mohan
Co-Founder & Partner, Sattva
Abhiraj Singh Bhal
Co-Founder, Urban Company
Aditya Sharma
Partner, McKinsey
Anjali Bansal
Founder, Avaana Capital
Ashish Dhawan
Founder, Central Square Foundation
Dr. Ajay Nair
CEO, Swasth Alliance
Dr. Nachiket Mor
Visiting Scientist, The Banyan Academy
Gayatri Yadav
CMO, Peak XV Partners
GV Ravishankar
MD, Peak XV Partners
Harshal Kamdar
CFO, Peak XV Partners
Hemant Mohpatra
Partner, Lightspeed
Ireena Vittal
Advisor
Karan Mohla
Partner, B Capital Group
Mekin Maheshwari
Founder, Udhyam Learning Foundation
Mohit Bhatnagar
MD, Peak XV Partners
Neetha Joy
Ex Director — ACT For Health
Prashanth Prakash
Partner, Accel
Sandeep Singhal
Co-Founder, Nexus Venture Partners
Sayali Karanjkar
Entrepreneur & Advisor
Shekhar Kirani
Partner, Accel
Shrinivas Katta
Founder, Rule Zero
Tejeshwi Sharma
MD, Peak XV Partners
COVID Response Collective
Supporters
Josy Paul
Chairman, BBDO India
Mukesh Bansal
Co-Founder, Cure Fit
Rahul Gupta
MD & CEO, Thyrocare
Tarun Davda
MD, Matrix Partners
Vani Kola
MD, Kalaari Capital
What we learned
From the COVID response
Capital at startup speed
Pooled philanthropic capital can move as fast as venture capital when founders, funders and operators trust each other and decide in days, not months.
Tech as a force multiplier
Dashboards, helplines and triage tools created the visibility and scale that traditional aid could not match alone — and quickly became the operating layer of the response.
Coalitions over silos
The deepest impact showed up when corporates, foundations, government and civil society pulled in the same direction. The platform that exists today is the long form of that lesson.
ACT Capital Foundation For Social Impact is a not-for-profit company incorporated and registered under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013 (CIN: U85300KA2021NPL148543). All donations made to ACT Capital Foundation are eligible for income-tax deduction under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act.
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