The Ventilator Project: How the IIT Kanpur Consortium Built a World-class Product during India’s Covid-19 Lockdown
'Riveting … a must-read' – K. VijayRaghavan ‘Brilliantly written … timely’ – Gopal Vittal ‘An inspiring story’ – Pramath Raj Sinha A raging pandemic, a dearth of life-saving equipment, and ninety days to manufacture a world-class ventilator. On 24 March 2020, a nationwide lockdown was imposed in India in the face of a formidable adversary, the Covid-19 pandemic. With the number of cases increasing exponentially, hospitals were faced with a dangerous shortage of life-saving equipment and personnel. In response to the imminent crisis, Amitabha Bandyopadhyay and Srikant Sastri formed the IIT Kanpur Ventilator Consortium as a task force to assist a young startup, Nocca Robotics, in building affordable high-quality ventilators for India’s cash-strapped hospitals. Under the mentorship of reputed industry leaders, the task force and the Nocca team worked tirelessly against unprecedented odds – trammelled by a ban on imports and telecommuting through Zoom and Whatsapp in the face of stringent lockdown restrictions – to manufacture the Noccarc V310 in record time. This is the incredible story of its conception, creation and success, in the words of the task force co-leaders themselves. Inspiring and riveting, The Ventilator Project also offers an unmatched blueprint for business in the post-Covid era through first-hand lessons gleaned during the task force’s phenomenal ninety-day run. It proves that India, with its deep recesses of talent and ingenuity, has the potential to be a world leader in both business and social impact.