OKCredit launches Co-aid.in to seek information on medicines and COVID-19 related critical equipment

The portal provides real-time information on the availability of medicines and COVID-related medical equipment pan-India, besides the contact number of the store for making enquiries

Amid the raging COVID-19 second wave, OkCredit has launched Co-aid.in website to help people in distress discover verified leads for COVID-19 critical medicines and equipment. The portal provides real-time information on the availability of medicines pan-India besides the contact number of the store for making enquiries. Users can search for availability by either entering the location name or the pincode on the portal.

The initiative aims at helping people access such medicines easily by knowing where they are available. The company is open-sourcing data of over two lakh pharmacy stores and businesses on its platform. These stores and businesses sell medical products and services such as fabiflu tablets, oximeters, O2 beds, normal beds, steamers, antibiotics, zinc/vitamin and oxygen used for treating COVID-19 patients. The data on oxygen and beds has been crowd sourced, whereas the data on medicines is from pharmacy stores on OkCredit’s platform.

Co-aid.in also allows pharmacy stores and businesses that are not on the OkCredit platform to register themselves on the website.

Within 12 days of its launch, the website has seen queries from 342 towns and cities within and outside India, including New York, Singapore, Seattle and Los Angeles, among a number of other international locations. In India, the highest number of searches have come from Bengaluru, Delhi and Kolkata but smaller locations such as Panipat, Muzaffarpur and Ranchi have also used the tool to search for nearby pharmacy shops.

Besides the pharmacy search tool, OkCredit is also encouraging people to volunteer for COVID-19 SOS requests. Known as Co Aid Volunteer (seen at the top right on the Co-aid.in website), the platform lists out volunteering opportunities for people. These could be oxygen or bed requirements, medicine needs, etc. One can search through COVID resources on various platforms to help out such people in need.

Sharing his views on the initiative, Harsh Pokharna, Co-founder and CEO, OkCredit, said, “People are overwrought with anxiety, fear and the unending feeling of helplessness amid rising COVID cases. This is a time for mutual collaboration and leveraging human connection to make the lives of COVID patients and their families a tad easier. At OkCredit, we are committed to leveraging our deeper and wider reach within the pharmacy stores and businesses to facilitate the availability of essential drugs and equipment used for treating COVID-19 patients.”