Marico Innovation Foundation responded to the growing seriousness of the Covid-19 pandemic with ‘Innovate2Beat Covid’—a nationwide grand challenge to unearth innovations that can combat the shortage of personal protective gear (PPE) and ventilators. The pragmatic call to help frontline workers spurred action among innovators; a detailed evaluation and due diligence of entries led to three innovations that emerged as fron-trunners with their ingenious PPE solutions. Harsh Mariwala, founder of Marico Innovation Foundation and chairman of Marico said, “These three organisations have created products that are innovative, are of superior quality, can be procured at very affordable price and have the potential to achieve significant impact – and this is exactly the need of the hour.”
We take a look at the products developed by these three ventures:
CREA Worldwide (Rs 41 lakh grant received )
One of the few players in the market offering a breathable yet hydrophobic PPE kit, CREA offers medical practitioners and frontline workers relief from dehydration that occurs on using laminated PPE kits. CREA is using non-laminated fabrics which makes its coveralls more breathable; these can be used up to 12 hours even in summer heat. Priced similar to non-breathable kits and with twice the life, CREA’s breathable PPE kits hold the potential to halve the PPE-kit expenditure incurred by hospitals per doctor per day. With peak summer approaching, dehydration is a key concern and CREA’s kits are poised to solve this problem for a large number of our frontline Covid-warriors.
Log 9 Materials (Rs 76 lakh grant received)
It has developed a unique multi-focal UV disinfection chamber (called CoronaOven) that can sanitise any surface of all pathogens in only 10 minutes, thus permitting hospitals to re-use masks, gloves and other PPE. Each microwave-sized compact chamber (33-litre) can disinfect 40 masks per hour, thus holding the potential to not only largely reduce the current high pressure on PPE supply, but also massively cut down on PPE waste. In just a month since CoronaOven’s launch, Log 9 has already sold 300+ ovens, which can help users disinfect and re-use up to 30 lakh gloves every month.
Saral Design Solutions (Rs 40 lakh grant received)
Saral has innovated to cost-effectively adapt its patented sanitary pad producing machine to manufacture higher quality 3-ply surgical masks (as opposed to commonly available 2-ply masks which do not protect against the Covid virus). Saral can manufacture at a rapid rate of 80 masks every minute, and is making these masks available to consumers at a frugal cost. Saral’s machine has already produced 10 lakh masks since the pandemic began. It plans to ramp up production through its manufacturing capabilities in 20 locations across tier II and III cities in India.
