Automobile giant, Mahindra, has been at the forefront of the battle against the Coronavirus pandemic. The company has been aggressively working on making an affordable ventilator for the past fortnight to help strengthen the healthcare services across the country. The first prototype was made in just 48 hours within the company facilities and 2 weeks ago the company had shared details of the first working model. In a follow-up a more advanced version with added features and controls is now ready and 20 such devices are now undergoing endurance testing at the plant.

Dr. Pawan Goenka, Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra shared the update on Twitter. He said that teams have worked round the clock for the last 18 days to be able to get to this stage. The company has taken inputs from 10 Doctors and few biomedical engineers in order to add more features and controls to the device that was shown earlier.

After 18 days of 24X7 work our team is almost there. Inputs taken from 10 doctors and few biomedical engineers. Many features and controls added from the first design. 20 machines under endurance testing in our plant. @MahindraRise @anandmahindra @PMOIndia pic.twitter.com/Nshd4bn0bh April 12, 2020

The company earlier had also asked for suggestions on what to name the device. According to Dr. Goenka more than 400 suggestions were received and combining many of those a final name has been decided. Mahindra has opted to call this AMBU bag respirator AIR100. It was earlier also committed that this will be an affordable device that will cost under ₹ 7,500 once ready. Normally conventional Ventilators cost anywhere between ₹ 5-10 lakhs.

Received more than 400 suggestions. Combining multiple suggestions the team has opted to call this AMBU bag respirator AIR100. Thank you for helping us with naming this device. https://t.co/sRnW3nAoDS — Pawan K Goenka (@GoenkaPk) April 12, 2020

To help medical practitioners in their daily fight in tackling the disease Mahindra is also making face shields on a large scale. At last count as many as 8 company facilities across the country are actively involved in assembling of these shields.

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