On March 10, E-Unnathi founder-member Bindu Sathyajith received a video of 680 students stuck at airports in Milan and Rome. She immediately forwarded it to the Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan, besides other E-Unnathi members.
Thus started their evacuation efforts. "We helped the Consulate General of India’s office, Indian Embassy in Rome and Ministries of External Affairs, Health and Family Welfare and Civil Aviation, Government of India, evacuate 218 Indian citizens from Milan and 263 from FCO Rome in two Air India flights," she says.
The group made a chart about the origin and final destination of all the people who were going to arrive at different airports. "Once all the people, who had managed to board planes, landed and had been quarantined, our next task was to send a medical team to Italy where more students were stranded. We managed to get all the batches out by March 22," she says, adding, "Our mission doesn’t stop here. We are still working to bring the remaining students and their families stranded in Italy, UK, Haiti, Malta and Genoa."
A networking platform for women, Kochi-based E-Unnathi started its journey in 2017. Spearheaded by a small group of successful female entrepreneurs, it has metamorphosed into a helping hand for those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Besides helping with evacuation efforts, one of the many initiatives undertaken by E-Unnathi is ‘Sahaayi’, which extends aid to the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). With lockdown, MSME businesses have been affected the most.
Bindu says, “COVID-19 has had a huge effect on the corporate world due to the sudden lockdown. We have connected the MSMEs, small scale industries, industrialists, employers and employees (those who have lost their jobs as an aftermath of COVID-19) towards a common cause." For the same, E-Unnathi has charted out an elaborate implementation plan.
The group has created a database of each vertical on their portal with the information acquired during registration and this will be used to connect with the other businesses. "Once registration is done and the issues faced by a particular industry is assessed, our panel will help the entrepreneur to overcome it through various means," says Bindu.
The data being shared on the portal is completely safe, she assures. “With the consortium of people in place, we can even request the government to make exceptions in GST or give them emergency funds. If a bigger company wants to use their CSR funds to uplift common interest groups that can also happen through this project,” she says.