How Freshworks helped NITI Aayog build the COvAID donation portal for fast and easy global aid
In April 2021, the number of Covid-19 infections in India was increasing at a rate of more than 3 lakh new cases daily.
India needed a steady supply of critical medical equipment, personal protection equipment (PPE) kits, masks and sanitizers, oxygen cylinders and concentrators, and Covid-19 essential medication as the numbers continued to rise. When resources proved scarce, their optimal allocation was the need of the hour. While the country received calls and emails about donations from around the globe, it needed a streamlined process to make and track these donations. And so, NITI Aayog, the Government of India’s public policy think tank, embarked on finding a solution: something that was easy for support agents to use and that could easily scale for a country as large as India with 1.3 billion citizens.
The stakes were high. The pandemic had already placed a huge strain on India’s national health infrastructure. Months after the first batch of Covid-19 vaccine had been administered, efforts to curb the pandemic’s effect remained a Sisyphean task—made rockier in the face of rising infections and cumbersome ways of distributing aid. Before technology eased the process of receiving aid, donations mostly came through offline sources. The manual process lacked integration and visibility, making it a tall task for teams to distribute aid quickly. Transparency was another central concern, coupled with long response times that sometimes stretched into weeks.
NITI, or the National Institution for Transforming India, selected Freshworks and AWS as the technology backbone to streamline these donations. Five days later, the COvAID online donations portal was launched. The COvAID portal made it easy to accept, consolidate, and distribute international donations. The portal also eliminated the need for manual intervention and paperwork during handovers so that life-saving equipment could be put to use immediately after delivery, saving time and lives.
Freshdesk simplified donations with a streamlined experience
With Freshdesk’s modern, easy-to-use Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform running on AWS Cloud, teams could now track, receive, and expedite the process of distributing aid efficiently. With the help of robust monitoring, the right people were notified at the right time, ensuring quick clearance, saving lives.
The COvAID portal streamlined the donation process in a few simple yet effective steps. This is how the system works: The donors first need to fill a form, which captures the necessary details, such as donated products and contact details. The submitted details are converted into tickets in Freshdesk, which get assigned to a task force agent who then verifies them.
Automation features as among one of the major benefits of using Freshdesk. For instance, the customer helpdesk obviates the need to write an email to the concerned government department or agency each time a donation is received. With Freshdesk, it automatically gets routed to people who need to act on it. At the click of a button, an email goes to the respective government bodies and based on their feedback, the donation gets processed further. These automations helped cut down response time drastically because manual interventions were not needed as much anymore. Freshdesk also streamlined the processes for getting permits from airport authorities, customs department, the excise department, and others that monitored the movement of goods across regions.
In less than 12 weeks since the inception of the portal, NITI Aayog started receiving online donations from India and around the world. Organizations and individuals were able to donate oxygen cylinders, concentrators, PPE kits, and flu medicines with greater ease and transparency. These resources, donated by good samaritans, went a long way in supporting healthcare workers and helping patients get proper treatment for Covid-19. Enabled by Freshworks’ technology, the NITI Aayog staff were now equipped to streamline incoming donations and deliver a targeted response to India’s Covid-19 crisis.
Freshdesk’s omnichannel capabilities helped the NITI Aayog team to quickly respond to donors across web, mobile, and social media platforms. Technology expedited foreign aid distribution with increased transparency and a reduction in response time.
“NITI has always been on the forefront of tech innovation in India and our latest COvAID portal has made a huge impact in our country’s fight against the coronavirus. Freshworks helped us create a delightful experience for our employees and donors without sacrificing the backend automations and integrations required to make the platform successful,” said Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog.
Technology is a great equalizer; when used efficiently, it can dramatically improve the quality of a person’s life with a click of a button. At Freshworks, our efforts to support the rapid response team at NITI Aayog would continue as our nation fights against the deadly Covid-19. Last year, we also joined hands with Project StepOne, a telemedicine healthcare service that successfully onboarded more than 12,000 doctors, 15,000 medics, and 5,000 non medical volunteers. StepOne also conducted 74,000 mental health counselling sessions, triaged 8.5 million callers, helping more than 35 million people with easy access to healthcare.
Details about Freshworks’ partnership with NITI Aayog can be found in this case study
