Agatha Sangma

GVL Narsimha Rao

Jamyang Tshering Namgyal

Kalanidhi Veerasamy

Karti Chidambaram

Kunwar Danish Ali

Lavu Krishna

Mahua Moitra

Manish Tewari

Priyanka Chaturvedi

Rajeev Gowda

Sudhanshu Trivedi

Sujeet Kumar

Varun Gandhi



Organisations

Population Foundation of India

Centre for Policy Research

Sequoia

Accel

Info Edge

Lightspeed

Nexus Venture Partners

Aavishkaar Group

Asha Impact

IIM Indore

CII, Delhi

Omnicuris

Meenakshi Datta Ghosh, Former Special Secretary, Health & Family Welfare, GoI, IAS

Dr. Arnab Mukherjee - Healthcare Economics, IIM Bangalore

Dr. Amir Ullah Khan - Public Services Expert, Academic, and Advisor, ISB, BMGF

Dr. Sonali Vaid, Healthcare Improvement Advisor

Dr. Nandita Bhan, Public Health Scientist

Su Shri Prerna Makkar, Founder Health Compact

Dr. Ruha Shadab, Harvard Public Service Fellow

Dr. Abha Mehndiratta, Visiting Fellow, Center for Global Development

Shri Mohammad Ather, PwC, Partner Economic Development

Su Shri Anika Singh, Health Design & Arts Expert, Founder Voyce.in

Over a dozen parliamentarians and political party spokespersons who are usually seen slugging it out on television channels are coming together with a group of venture capitalists , academics and institutions to scout for innovative solutions to fight the nCovid19 pandemic and consequent economic crisis.The action group would work towards building concrete and scalable solutions in public health, economy and livelihoods, according to Ghanshyam Tiwari, the national coordinator of Parliamentarians with Innovators for India (PII). Tiwari, himself a spokesperson for the Samajwadi Party, says while the members of Parliament would help in mobilising the public to back ideas, venture capitalists and experts would help fund and scale them.The idea is to tap professionals to find executable projects focused on immediate public health response to Covid-19 driven by entrepreneurs, academicians, companies, and other experts, he said.The group hopes to hold its first meeting on April 15 over video conference where it would discuss at least three ideas—an app (backed by Tiwari himself) to raise money for migrant workers from Bihar, another that helps patients in remote areas schedule tele-consultation with doctors and a third that matches store inventories with local demand."For any innovator, state level penetration is super hard,’’ says Rajan Anandan, managing director of Sequoia Capital India which is part of PI India. Anandan told ET over phone that this group has the ability to mobilise quickly at the state level, manoeuvre through the administrative machinery and facilitate faster approvals.Sameer Brij Verma, managing director Nexus Venture Partners, sees it as an inter-disciplinary action group that would work as an interface between industry and the government.Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi, another member of the group says that parties today are intensely divided and an action group such as this bringing together parliamentarians from different parties would help approach problems with an open mind. ``The MPs would not be politicking but focus on positive policymaking,’’ Chaturvedi said.On paper, the group looks impressive with involvement of institutions such as Population Foundation of India (PFI) and Centre for Policy Research and heavyweight venture capitalists such as Accel, Info Edge and Nexus Venture Partners. However, what comes out of it and whether it will be an effective platform will be known only after at least the first meeting, said one MP who is part of it. GVL Narasimha Rao of the BJP told ET he had agreed to be part of as it promised to be a place to contribute ideas.``Parliamentarians can do a lot in spreading awareness and in data-based advocacy,’’ says Poonam Mutreja, director, PFI. Mutreja said PFI can help design communications strategy that could help break myths about nCovid19 and helpful things to do to fight the disease and its aftermath.Anil Antony of the Congress Party who is the PII coordinator for south and west says MPs would help take solutions to the ground. Their belonging to different states would help smoothen deployment of the identified ideas besides sharing successful practices from states, he told ET.While commercial logic is usually at the centre of a venture capitalist’s decision making, these are extraordinary times. ``The way to assess the impact in this case would be the impact the idea can have,’’ says Abhinav Chaturvedi, partner at Accel.There are multiple pools of capital available to tap, according to VCs. They say it need not come from their balance sheets. A group of fund managers and venture funds had started a Rs 100 crore fund called the Action Covid-19 Team or ACT whose first grant of Rs 1 crore was made to molecular diagnostics company Mylabs to produce test kits.