National: Vuram, a leading global hyper-automation services company, has launched several initiatives to support communities from the impact of the ongoing pandemic. The organisation’s CEO, Venkatesh Ramarathinam, launched the community-focused initiative ‘Upturn Fund’ to extend a helping hand to those affected directly or indirectly due to COVID-19.
During these unprecedented times, Upturn Fund provides financial support to individuals and families to continue medical treatment, cover educational expenses, and meet living expenses. Initially, a seed fund of INR 1 Crore was added by Vuram towards the initiative. People in the organisation are encouraged to identify and refer people in need and funds are distributed based on details validated from the referrals.
Considering the urgency of the pandemic situation, the Upturn committee reviews the requests received from people at Vuram every day, even if there is a single request. The average turnaround time for approval is 48 hours, and payments are processed immediately by the Finance team at Vuram, ensuring that payments are directly credited to the beneficiary’s account.
The initiative has benefited more than 340 families across India as of 20 October 2021. The majority of the fund has reached the beneficiaries residing in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana, and New Delhi. The financial support was used for purposes including accessing medical treatment, hospitalisation, continuing studies, and financial support to vulnerable families who have lost sole bread-earning family members.
During the pandemic, Vuram provided week-long wellness holidays ending on June 8, 2021, to ensure personal and mental well-being. Apart from the initial seed funding, all revenue generated during this date was set aside to donate to the Upturn Fund.
Though there are visible signs of returning to normal after accelerated efforts to provide mass vaccinations, it is essential to continue supporting economically struggling families and individuals until the pandemic stage is cleared. Ongoing support is vital to ensure complete economic recovery and social welfare among financially weak sections in society. Since the fund can be allocated based on the referrals by the people in the organisation, individual cases can be addressed that can easily be overlooked by larger initiatives due to the complexity of the situation.
In addition to supporting recovery from the pandemic with financial support, the organisation also developed Trackable, a highly customisable, flexible, and adaptive application for the live tracking of the distribution of vaccines, other life-saving equipment, and resources with the location pinpointed in a map with all required information. Trackable’s analytics capabilities can manage demand for vaccines and forecast trends while it can be customized to address the changing needs of the crisis.
As the global efforts are focused on overcoming the economic and social impact of the disruption, it is crucial to explore every opportunity to support recovery. The Upturn Fund is a way to ensure necessary support reaches the grassroots level. Despite the challenges, it is the need of the hour to foster resiliency and provide resources to prepare for future challenges and ensure social development.
