Three well-known Indian-American CEOs – Sundar Pichai, Punit Renjen and Shantanu Narayen of Google, Deloitte and Adobe respectively – have joined the steering committee of the Global Task Force on Pandemic Response on Thursday, 6 May, to drive the corporate sector's initiative to help India battle COVID-19, reported PTI.
According to the report, all three CEOs have been actively looking into the US companies' response to the COVID-19 crisis.
Mark Suzman, CEO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Joshua Bolten, president, and CEO, Business Roundtable and Suzanne Clark, president, and CEO, US Chamber of Commerce are some of the others who were added on Thursday to the committee, which already has on board Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture; Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, Brian Moynihan, Chairman of the Board and CEO, Bank of America; Raj Subramaniam, president FedEx; and Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO, IBM.
On Wednesday, CEOs of top 40 companies in America launched an initiative to provide COVID-19 emergency relief material, including 1,000 ventilators and 25,000 oxygen concentrators, to India, pooling in over $30 million to support the country.
The first 1,000 oxygen concentrators, provided by Deloitte, arrived in India on 25 April, with critical logistical support from FedEx.
The ventilators are expected to reach India by 3 June, with the help of Medtronic. As many as 16 businesses have joined the task force's ventilator initiative, according to the report.
The task force is a new public-private partnership organised by the US Chamber of Commerce and supported by Business Roundtable. It is working with the Chamber's US-India Business Council and the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum to take immediate actions to help address the COVID-19 surge in India.
So far, over 45 US businesses and associations have contributed to the Global Task Force's activities.
(With inputs from PTI)
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