Banal as it may seem, our response to a crisis is what reveals our true self. And thus emerged COVID heroes who chose to extend their arm of care and concern to the larger society. It is that difficult step between visualising a solution and making it a reality that a hero manages to get past. The results speak for themselves through some stellar examples of big thinking and walking the talk.

This June, it is the COVID heroes who are in the spotlight at IWI.

We can’t say how proud we are to introduce this Incredible Woman and COVID Superhero, who is bringing the best of science, technology and innovation to the forefront in India’s battle against COVID-19.

Meet Dr Sapna Poti

Dr Poti is the Director of Strategic alliances in the Principal Scientific Advisor’s Office, Government of India. Her primary role is to promote Scientific R&D and Innovations for social impact and to address industry problems through Industry, Foundations and Government channels. This includes engaging Science & Technology institutes and the entire start up ecosystem to meet National Missions & National priorities including COVID 19, doubling farmers income, make in India, water mission, waste management mission etc.

She brings people and organisations together

Over the past year and a half, Dr Sapna Poti has been instrumental in bringing together, corporates, non-profits and academia to build a supportive ecosystem to fight COVID. She has been working extensively with Indian and Global organisations and institutions to build partnerships that can bring about secular changes in healthcare and agricultural infrastructure in the country. From visionary initiatives like Blockchain to more utilitarian efforts like face shields, Dr Poti’s team has been instrumental in bringing a variety of ideas to reality. During this period, she has worked with stalwarts like Infosys, Daimler, Tata Motors, Murugappa Group, Toyota Kirloskar, SBI Foundation, Capgemini, PNB, Standard Chartered to name a few, towards promoting research and creating testing kits, protective gear, makeshift hospitals, oxygen concentrators and solutions for agriculture and migrant workers.

Look at some projects she has worked on, in 2020!

The enormous challenge of a severe shortage of COVID-19 diagnostic testing kits had hampered the country’s plans for large-scale testing of the population. This shortage of kits was primarily caused by lack of supply of high-quality reagents that go into the manufacturing of these kits. Diagnostics through city clusters was ideated for the creation of public-private partnership models for a nation-wide capacity-building programme to address this problem.

Mentored Laboratory Training,  a multi-pronged COVID-19 diagnostic training programme was designed to empower trainees with the basic knowledge and practical bench skills of molecular biology, for COVID-19 and Infectious Diseases. The program was launched by the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics – along with Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Pan IIT Alumni Reach for India, and National Institute of Immunology.

A project to build an Invasive Ventilator with IoT-enabled features, developed by IIT Kanpur and Nocca Robotics Pvt. Ltd is now at the compliance and pre-clinical testing stage! The initiative is supported by Cummins India, ICICI Securities, Ansys, Standard Chartered, Naukri.com and AdorPowerton.

Dr Poti’s team has worked with Cholamandalam, the investment arm of Murugappa to arrange sponsorship for a project by IIT Madras students in manufacturing face shields Using Injection Moulding and 3D printing, at the rate of 4000 pieces per day. Around 45,000 face shields have been provided for hospital and police personnel in Chennai so far.

How about insufficient number of hospitals in rural India? Under Dr Poti’s guidance, Wells Fargo is providing funding support to an IIT Madras-incubated start-up called Modulus Housing to tackle this problem. The start-up has developed a portable hospital unit that can be installed anywhere within two hours by four people, called ‘MediCAB,’. It is a decentralised approach to detect, screen, identify, isolate and treat COVID-19 patients in their local communities through these portable microstructures. It is foldable and is composed of four zones – a doctor’s room, an isolation room, a medical room/ ward and a twin-bed ICU, maintained at negative pressure.

Murugappa Group has provided funding for an IIT Madras project to design and enable rapid construction of a modular ‘Doffing Unit’ for the safe removal of PPE. This project was undertaken in collaboration with the Chengalpattu Medical College and Hospital (CMCH) in Tamil Nadu where the doffing unit has already been deployed. The entire design, fabrication and deployment of the doffing unit took place remotely during the lockdown period

Reliable power backup for ventilators and Isolation homes in B & C towns, where power availability is not reliable or at the remote locations which are off-grid has become essential. Towards this, Infineon Technologies AG, a German semiconductor manufacturer, is providing support to Cygni Energy, an IIT Madras incubated start-up, to develop a power backup system for the ventilators. The power backup for ventilators will be targeted towards off-grid and weak-grid areas.

Through Dr Poti’s efforts, Asian Paints Limited has extended financial support to Mylab Discovery Solutions to manufacture and keep available an emergency stock of kits required to help in mass testing. The fund will help MyLab take the necessary inventory risks, plan supplies in advance and meet the growing needs. Currently, MyLab has an existing manufacturing capacity of 25,000 tests per day, which can be enhanced to 40,000 tests per day by further automation.

A solution is being developed by IIT Madras in collaboration with the IT Firm Infosys – called ‘BlockTrack’. This project envisages a solution leveraging Blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) and AI/ ML (Artificial Intelligence/Machine learning) and could be disruptively beneficial. The project seeks to build an infrastructure for single-point records, interoperability and track unwanted or new contagious diseases spreading in the population. The Blockchain-based solution seeks to maintain tamper-proof record of movements of target persons and interoperability among health organizations. These records track pre-identified contagious disease carriers and help health organizations to work in synchronization with each other, across geographies.

After these and many more projects last year, Dr Poti and her team are focusing on three turnkey initiatives this year.

Extension Hospitals, in association with a start-up called Modulus Housing, incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, can build a 100-bedded extension facility in 3-weeks time. These rapidly deployable hospitals will plug a major health infrastructure gap in India’s fight against COVID, especially in rural areas and smaller towns. MediCab is already commissioning 8 extension hospitals and many in pipeline using CSR grants by the corporates.

Project O2 , caters to meeting the rising demand for medical oxygen by supporting government hospitals. To execute this project, a National Consortium of OXYGEN is enabling national level supply of critical raw materials such as zeolites, setting up of small oxygen plants, manufacturing compressors, final products i.e. quality oxygen plants, concentrators and ventilators. The manufacturing and supply consortium also includes Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Electronic Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Skanray Technologies, IIT Kanpur, C-CAMP Bengaluru, IIT Delhi, Venture Center Pune, IIT Bombay, IIT Hyderabad, IISER Bhopal and 40+ MSMEs.

Virus Variants study, an extremely important research on studying vaccine-derived immune response. This would help the scientific community to better understand the phenomenon of “immune escape” because of the various variants currently in circulation and recommend appropriate mitigation measures. The study is being led by prominent involves leading research institution. 

We posed some fun questions to the busy leader. Here is what she had to say!

A book you would recommend ?

Roots, Alex Haley

A superpower you would like to have ?

I already have my late father as a superpower and a guardian angel…any more will be a crowd and may create confusion !

Who do you think should play your role in your biopic?

No one will be able to play me….I am quite a character!

If you are marooned on a lonely island, three persons and things who should be with you? 

Would prefer to be left alone in the island!

Share a mantra for success ?

No one died of hardwork !

Are you starstruck in admiration of these enormous efforts, just as we are? Well, this is just a small sample of the extensive body of work that Dr Poti and her team are engaged in. I am sure quite a few of us owe our safety, rescue and recovery from COVID to one of this initiatives!

IWI would like to thank Dr Poti and her team for their dedication and support towards the fight against COVID. We doff our hats to these outstanding and innovative efforts.

Here is wishing Dr Poti and her team good luck!

Dr Poti is a PhD from IIT Madras with a dissertation in Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP)and has around 26 years of experience in Industry, Consulting and Government. Her previous stints were with Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, Tata Trusts and National Skill Development Corporation (under the aegis of Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship) in the social development and Government sector. Dr. Poti also has industry and consulting experience with ITC, Hewitt Associates, Deloitte, Toyota Kirloskar, Tatas and Crompton Greaves. Dr Poti is a member of Niti Aayog’s Expert Group on ‘Skill Development for Mountain States’, Member of GIZ MSME committee and MESA’s advisory committees. Further, Dr Poti is a Chevening Awardee 2015. She is also a member on the Board of studies of skill development and educational institutes. She has authored national and international journal papers.

Special Thanks to Latha Venkitachalam, IIT Madras

Compiled By

Nithya Rajagopal

Manager, Content and Community, IWI