Apax responds to the humanitarian crisis in India
22nd June 2021
Apax In April 2021, the Apax Foundation responded to the unfolding health emergency in India with a grant to ACT (Action Covid19 Team), a VC and PE-led collaborativeIn April 2021, the Apax Foundation responded to the unfolding health emergency in India with a grant to ACT (Action Covid19 Team), a VC and PE-led collaborative initiative founded in the first wave of the Covid19 pandemic. ACT brings entrepreneurial innovation to public delivery and ensures funds are directed to high impact solutions.
ACT’s ‘Oxygen for Everyone’ programme identified demand for more than 200,000 oxygen concentrators across India and entered into partnerships to secure a steady supply of 40,000 concentrators. By May 2021, ACT had raised $33m in funds from across the VC and PE industry and dispatched oxygen concentrators to 150 centres.
ACT’s immediate priority was to deploy the oxygen concentrators; it plans to focus on deploying PSAs as a next step. PSA plants generate oxygen by extracting it from the air and can cater to an entire medical facility. With PSA plants, ACT aims to build long-term capacity solutions to address the oxygen shortage. In the longer term, ACT plans to expand its efforts to support vaccination scale-up.
News of the Apax Foundation’s grant to ACT sparked a large-scale response across Apax, with colleagues globally contributing to the cause. The Apax Foundation trustees were delighted to support this surge of giving with additional matched funding – within a month, personal donations from the Apax team and matched funding together had more than doubled the original grant.
"As a Trustee of the Apax Foundation, I was proud to see how readily and generously the Apax team sprang to help. As an Apax partner, I was proud of the outward-looking, collaborative culture that inspired such fellow-feeling from colleagues across the global firm."
Shashank Singh
Apax Foundation:
The Apax Foundation is the channel for Apax’s charitable giving worldwide. It focuses on social mobility in under-served communities and has developed active partnerships with charities in countries where our team are based. The Apax Foundation aims to make a meaningful difference in the communities where we work and live, and supports firm-wide volunteering initiatives as well as the personal philanthropic activities of the Apax team globally.