AKS Clothings, a Gurugram-based Indian ethnic brand founded by Nidhi and Satpal Yadav, is manufacturing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits for frontline coronavirus warriors. So far, the brand has supplied over 11,000 kits, and the rest are under production at its Gurugram and Delhi units.
“We aim to produce a total of one lakh kits. While these will be given to sanitation workers, policemen and private guards free of cost, the ones for private and government hospital will be on paid basis,” says Nidhi.
Each kit includes a jumpsuit with attached shoes, a face mask, a transparent visor, and gloves. “Though each of our Gurugram and Delhi units have a capacity of 150 workers per unit, in order to ensure the safety of our workers and maintain a safe working distance, we have called in only 45 workers per unit. Our objective is to maintain the supply of these PPE kits to those who are in need of them for as long as the lockdown lasts,” Nidhi adds.
Many private entities and institutions have approached AKS for the kits but a major portion of the order has been placed by the government, says Satpal.
“As of now, we will distribute 3,000 kits free of cost to sanitation workers, police force, private security guards and other essential workers, who are dealing with potentially infected people on a daily basis,” he says.
“Unfortunately, as much as we want to, we cannot distribute the entire one lakh PPE kits free of cost because we have a large workforce of subcontracted labour to take care of. We need to generate some sort of revenue to pay them as well,” he adds.
Before this initiative, the brand mass produced 50,000 face masks at its factory in Jaipur that distributed these free of cost to institutions in need.