Chennai rains: Indian startups like Zomato, Paytm and Ola kickstart relief measures for those stuck

BENGALURU: Indian internet firms including Practo, Zomato, Paytm and Ola are pooling together help and relief measures to those affected in the Chennai rains.

Practo, the healthcare discovery platform is calling doctors listed on their platform to see if they are available to lend services to those affected. The company has created a Google document and is crowdsourcing data, and validating doctors before it is open for public.

“We are filtering out general physicians, since they will be first priority,” said a spokesperson of the company, who is updating the document every hour, after validating their credentials.

Chennairains.org, is fast becoming the epicenter for crowdsourcing all kinds of information: including adding requests for rescue, offers for shelter, food, split by geography.

Food ordering app Zomato is encouraging users to donate meals to those in Chennai on its app. A meal for 2 costs Rs 100, and the company has tied up with local NGOs to deliver the meal in 30 minutes.

CEO Deepinder Goyal tweeted “15,000 meals bought by our users for #Chennai. Zomato adds to it to make it 30,000. Let's all help get to 100k – we can do this.”

Paytm said it is offering free instant recharges of Rs 30 for friends of users stuck in Chennai.

Other crowdsourcing efforts include a map-based project on Github, which highlighted over 1,500 streets that had been flooded in the last 24 hours.

“My friend Aruna Shankarnarayan and I thought of such a map over the weekend as we wanted people to have a real sense of what is happening on the ground. There was no platform that was offering exact details,” said Arun Ganesh, an interaction designer at Mapbox “Due to the rush..the site has even crashed today.”

Transportation hailing app Ola said it has created safety zones in central and north Chennai (Walltax road and Ambattur) are equipped with food and medical supplies for those who are stranded. A mix of employees and drivers are setting up the safety zones.

"We are in constant talks to increase the safety zones and boats in the city" said an Ola spokesperson, although he did not know the exact number of boats that were deployed.