“I am looking forward to a time when no one searches for this App,” expressed Srivatsa, creator of Namma Helping Hands Handbook App. When more people are using this App, it means that the pandemic is still affecting people at large and hence we want the number of users to come down, he explained.
In the month of April when the pandemic had struck in full force, Srivatsa, who is a Principal Manager in Engineering, saw first-hand how difficult it was for people to get the necessary help like hospital beds and oxygen to various location. “I was seeing that even educated people were finding it difficult to get these amenities and wondered how much the other people would be suffering,” he said.
While thinking of ways in which he could be of help, Srivatsa came across a group called as Namma Helping Hands which was founded by Vijay Pathi and Muralidharan, where more than 200 volunteers were involved in booking hospitals beds and providing various other requirements to the people. “These volunteers are aware of the process involved better than the common people and even I also wanted to participate in helping with making calls,” he said.
Slowly the number of requests started increasing and per day they would receive 30 to 40 requests. “Vijay approached me and asked if I knew excel sheet as it was difficult to keep track of multiple cases and as there are different number for different zones, it was getting overwhelming,” he said. To help with the administrative work, Srivatsa developed an internal app, specially for volunteers called as Helping hands, through which the volunteers could manage cases and get all the information about a particular area automatically with the click of a finger.
Srivatsa
“During mid-May when the State Government introduced 40 to 50 Triage Centres, it was almost impossible to locate and find the place and hence we decided to release the app by providing map view of the place with all the details,” said Srivatsa. Much more importantly, the app provided information on oxygen and other aspects and its availability.
He explained that during the time of rise in Black Fungus cases, the app included details of what it is, precautions to be taken and the list of hospitals that were treating black fungus cases.
Srivatsa recalls that the most user spike was seen when the app shifted its focus to provide information regarding vaccination. “We provided map to all the vaccination centres listed in Bengaluru and even included list of paid vaccination drives held in the area. We had about 15,000 to 20,000 users and about 300,000 views,” he added.
“From a Covid perspective things are dying down and I hope that it stays that way,” he said.
None of the 200 volunteers working here have seen each other but everyone has worked hard to provide their help towards the ones in need, Srivatsa said. “Data verification is a very key part of the app and all these information given is personally verified by our volunteers. The key volunteers behind the app are Sheily, Alka, Lakshmi, Hema, Reena and Pradeep,” he mentioned and commended them on their work.
As a future plan for the app, Srivatsa said that they are planning to turn it into a job portal for the unorganised sector and the planning for this step is going on.
