Chennai floods: Ola deploys free boat service to rescue people

CHENNAI: Some tweets can be prophetic. Sample this: “Pesaama oru vaarathuku boat rent ku eduthukalaama?” (Should we simply rent a boat for a week?) a Chennai citizen had Tweeted his troubles two days ago. On Tuesday, taxi aggregator Ola said it has deployed boats to rescue people stranded in heavily inundated areas in the city.

Ola is running the free boat service in the city, reeling under consistent heavy rainfalls in the past few days, with the help of the city fire and rescue department and some expert rowers and boats roped in by Blue Waters, a Chennai based sport fishing company. “More than the idea, the execution itself was a challenge. Sourcing rowers and boats, training them on the objective of the exercise and getting them to be available in the waterlogged areas were key to making this possible,” said Anand Subramanian, who heads marketing communications at Ola.

The effort, which Ola claims was thought of well before social media exhortations highlighted the need, has so far targeted five areas including Velachery and Thoraipakkam, which is along the IT corridor and a dwelling place for many coders marked as essential resources by software service exporters.

While the idea was deliberated since the onset of floods, Ola had executed the act in hours, beginning the effort by placing a call to Blue Waters late Monday evening after it became apparent that a proper relief effort involving boats was needed.

The number of catamarans now sent out to floodsloshed areas in Chennai will be raised as the effort gains momentum. The other challenge was to coordinate the act of getting basic supplies across submerged areas.

“While we had the boats, the rowers and the fishermen to deploy, to convert what we had into a proper relief effort, we need someone like Ola,” said Santhosh Jagadeesh, a director of Blue Waters.

Ola had given quick crash courses to the boatmen on preference to senior citizens, advisory to not charge customers, and etiquette. Jagadeesh said that while the catamarans fit the bill, inflatable dinghies would be ideal transport vehicles. He added that there is a possibility of flying down such dinghies from a factory in Pune, which can be done if more like Ola enter the relief bandwagon.

Blue Waters collects food from a playschool called Bamboola, which is now a one-stop collection centre of organisations willing to chip in for the relief effort. Bamboola has been canvassing for days now on Facebook for relief material from all over Chennai. “Till Friday, our school in Mandaiveli will be the collection centre, which is seeing generous contributions,” said Sujatha Vijay, who runs Bamboola.