Yashjeet leaving his home to deliver the lunchboxes packed for Covid patients

Aligarh, a populous city in western Uttar Pradesh, is known for its traditional door locks, a leading University, and for being home to one of India’s oldest thermometer brand.

As the day temperatures soar in the city, a 23-year-old hurtles down the street with a bagful of lunchboxes. He is in a hurry as a group of elders are waiting for him at an old age home that has been turned into a Covid relief camp.

As a child, Yashjeet Varshney saw his parents buying food for people on the streets and setting up bhandaras (community kitchen) regularly for anyone and everyone around their house.

His mother, Deepali Varshney, is ever eager to just take out her big wok and start cooking for anyone, always with love.

When the second wave of the pandemic started, the family learnt that their immediate neighbour was down with Covid and was admitted to a nearby Covid relief camp, but there was no one to feed his two young kids – a 10-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl – who had lost their mother eight years back.

“When my mother got to know about this, she immediately cooked up some homemade poha for the kids, and asked me to take some food to the camp for their father as well,” says Yashjeet.

Yashjeet’s mother, Deepali Varshney, is ever eager to just take out her big wok and start cooking for anyone, always with love

When he reached the camp, Yashjeet wondered what other patients there, many of whom were very poor, were doing for food. The staff there told him that while they try to make some arrangements, hot and nutritious home-cooked meals were a luxury.

That’s when he realized he and his mother needed to scale up, and provide for these patients.

“My parents loved the idea, as always,” says Yashjeet, a B-School student who joined Samsung India as an intern a month ago. His little food delivery system continues through the internship, while working from home.

His mother cooks light and nutritious meals for 10-15 people at a time. Yashjeet packs them hygienically and delivers them to patients at the relief camp, in between attending virtual meetings with business leaders at Samsung India.

“It’s hard to describe how it feels to be able to help people, especially in times like these.”

On one of his visits early on, Yashjeet got infected himself, but his parents weren’t discouraged. “Rather, they kept me motivated and we resumed our little food delivery system soon after I recovered,” he says.

Yashjeet says he has imbibed the importance of valuing people and acknowledging their pain from his parents and that has helped him evolve into the person he is today.

These values of his resonate with the core values that Samsung stands for – of People and Co-Prosperity.

“It’s hardly extraordinary to me. Sharing is just the way of life in my family. And that is what makes me feel at home even at Samsung. I remember reading about People and Co-Prosperity as two of the core values of Samsung when I bought my first mobile phone. And I thought to myself how perfect it would be if I ever got to work with the brand,” says Yashjeet, who is a first year student at B-School MDI Gurgaon.

Mr. Samsu Ali: I wanted to make something good out of my life, in a way where I could also help others. And I never forgot my roots

AM Samsu Ali knows what it feels like to be on the street and not having enough food to eat. As a child, he spent days on the streets, doing odd jobs to support himself and his family. On many nights, he even went hungry.

But through his hard work and perseverance, Samsu was able to pick himself up, and over time set up a successful business. Today he owns Chennai Mobiles, a chain of smartphone retail stores in the southern Indian city of Coimbatore. But those early experiences remain with him forever.

Perhaps that’s the reason why this Samsung partner and his team have taken it upon themselves to provide food to around 800 needy people everyday in Coimbatore, through the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021.

“Skipping work and going to school was a luxury that I could never afford. But neither could I afford giving up due to the hardships,” Samsu says. “I wanted to make something good out of my life, in a way where I could also help others. And I never forgot my roots.”

From there to running one of the biggest mobile retail chains in Tamil Nadu is quite an inspiring story. But more inspiring to the Samsung team is his initiative of giving back to society, a value of ‘Co-prosperity’ that Samsung imbibes.

Mr. Samsu Ali: Be it this pandemic or any other unfortunate calamity, this team will always stand to support those in need

Samsung has a network of over 200,000 retail stores spread across every corner of India, and many Samsung partners who run these stores, have done some philanthropic work or the other during the pandemic, both in 2020 and now in 2021.

They have helped people in the communities around them by providing food, Oxygen cylinders, concentrators, medicines and even setting up hospital beds in partnership with local authorities. Many have worked hand in hand with Samsung for Covid support.

“I only deliver food that I can have”

Samsu says his cooks prepare food for 700-800 people every day, ensuring all precautions are in place, including wearing masks and regular sanitization. All quality and hygiene standards are maintained.

“My cooks make sure there’s a mix of biryani, curd rice, chapati with lentils, or idli-sambhar.” Vegetarian food is cooked separately keeping the beneficiaries’ preferences in mind.

Even Samsu himself being infected with Covid-19 sometime back did not dampen his spirits. The fire in his kitchen continued and he was back on the streets once he recovered.

In addition to cooked food, Samsu has been providing groceries and financial aid too to the people.

Mr. Samsu Ali: I know what it is to be helpless, and not be able to provide food for family. I can feel their pain, and the joy

“When you do good work, others join you voluntarily”

Around 40 of his employees at Chennai Mobiles are part of this effort voluntarily, helping people tirelessly. There is also a local NGO partner to deliver food.

With all this food prepared, four people set out every morning in a van to ensure that they cover as many affected areas in Coimbatore as possible.

“Be it this pandemic or any other unfortunate calamity, this team will always stand to support those in need,” he says.

 So, what’s his reward?

“A lot of people get overwhelmed and thank us with tears in their eyes when they receive food. Our true reward is the fact that they feel safe with us, that someone is looking out for them,” Samsu says.

“I know what it is to be helpless, and not be able to provide food for family. I can feel their pain, and the joy.”

While Prakash Manik Kanade lay on the bed in a small clinic in Nasik donating plasma, he could not ignore the wall to his left which had a scene from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, a brilliant collection of stories set in the forests of Pench in central India. In the scene, Mowgli is seen chatting with his adorable animal friends around him.

The Jungle Book was one of his favourites as a child, and he was reminded of the lines from the book “For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”

Prakash is an area sales manager for Samsung India in Nashik. His family had just recovered from Covid in mid-March when an acquaintance asked him if he would donate plasma that another patient required. He and his family were hesitant, but after taking advise from doctors about there being no side effects, he was here in this clinic donating.

“These lines from the book kind of spoke to me. I thought I had to help the pack,” he says.

That is when Prakash decided to go beyond just donating plasma himself to motivating others as well.

When he joined many social media and instant messenger groups that were helping people, he figured there were many misconceptions about donating. He and a group of friends then worked to clarify those misconceptions, tying up with a local radio channel and with blood banks. Weeks later, the multiple instant messenger groups now have over 3,000 people who are eager to help.

Over the last month and a half, Prakash and his friends have got over 200 people to donate plasma, helping more than 300 patients with plasma when they needed it.

“I would get calls at 2 am from people who were standing outside a blood bank. The bank required them to come with a plasma donor in exchange for processed plasma. That is not always possible for caregivers of patients in need,” he says. This is where the tie-ups with blood banks helped.

“We would call the blood bank or its owner and tell them to provide the plasma in lieu of the donors they had sent earlier, and also a promise to send more donors soon.”

It clicked. “I was fortunate my family came out unscathed. I just wanted to help others,” he adds.

So when a Samsung employee’s friend who had recently moved to Nashik got infected, Prakash was there to help. Through the network he had built, he spread the word around and got an ICU bed for the employee’s friend who was critical.

Prakash helped the Covid positive family with food, arranged plasma for the husband, and called the wife multiple times a day to ensure she remained strong.

“Medical support is one thing, but what many require in such times is moral support. I wanted to assure her that she and her children were not alone in the city,” he says.

No wonder Prakash Manik Kanade has become the go-to person for the Samsung team and many others in the community in Nasik when anyone needs a hospital bed, medicines, oxygen or plasma.

Stories such as these inspire us at Samsung. Don’t we say, Do What You Can’t!

(Please note: Plasma donation should be done only at the advice of a certified medical practitioner)

The second wave of Covid-19 had taken everyone by surprise. It was fast and furious and impacting swathes of population across the country. The demand for hospital beds, oxygen and critical medicines shot up. While most people genuinely wanted to help, an overload of information available and being shared on social media often became a roadblock with a lot of the information turning out to be incorrect or invalid.

“At Samsung, we set up Samsung Covid Support Group (helpdesks) around the country to support our 70,000 employees and their families in India, with many employees from across functions volunteering to man them. But one problem we came to realize soon was that the list of available oxygen or ICU beds in hospitals, chemists, blood banks, ambulances, oxygen cylinder or O2 concentrator suppliers, was in thousands and often invalid. Imagine you hitting a wall when you are battling to save someone’s life,” says Arindam Lahiri, General Manager, HR at Samsung India, who was leading the project.

This is when the team decided to rope in the services of colleagues at the Samsung customer service call centre to verify this huge list of contacts and prepare a genuine list. But there was little time to do so.

“When I got a call from my boss, I was told it is war time and I have to prepare this list in under a week. It was a mammoth task and I was stressed myself because of the lockdown, but this was something I was doing to help people of my country, saving many precious lives. The very thought electrified me and I was ready to go,” says Deepanjali Sahu, who hails from Lucknow.

Deepanjali was among a five-member all women team at the call centre who were handpicked for the job. They had to work through every number on that list, separate the genuine from the fake, update the availability of supplies at the genuine ones, make a list under each head, and share with the teams so that employees, their friends and families, and the public with whom they shared it, could use it.

Even before the team started calling, time and effort was spent in putting together a detailed questionnaire for each category – hospitals, oxygen suppliers, chemists who home delivered, people supplying food to Covid patients, blood banks, testing centers and ambulances – along with the scripts.

“Our girls were getting into unchartered territory, something they had never done before,” says Bandana Chetia, who heads training at the Samsung Call Centre. “We designed these questions so that they could get quick answers without wasting the time of the person on the call.”

The calling team was sensitized on this aspect right in the beginning and that helped them stay calm when the respondents were rude to them.

Some of the Call Centre team had their own family members down with Covid in other parts of the country. But they were on a mission to help.

“My cousin in Bihar was down with Covid and I really wanted to help her and the family, but was unable to do so as I was away. That motivated me to work hard and help whoever I could when this opportunity came to me. Today when I think this list is helping thousands of families and friends, it gives me a lot of satisfaction that I was a part of such a noble act,” says Vishakha Tiwari, one of the five executives in the team.

It was a daunting task. Doctors and hospitals wanted them to take an appointment and walk in to get details. Many ambulance staff picked up their calls but disconnected instantly. Many suppliers said their stocks had run out and asked them to call back for updates later.

“We could understand their compulsions and frustration. We were calling ‘frontline workers’ to verify details when they would be expecting a call from a patient in need,” says Priyanka Gupta. “But we managed to convince many service providers to give us time because we were doing it for the greater good, to ensure people who call them in time of need had the right information. And they understood. Some even took the time to let us know when their stocks would be replenished,” she recalls.

With their effort, the five were able to prune the number down to 20% of the original list in a week.

This list is now being verified and updated every week and is shared with employees across the country. Employees further share it with their friends, families and on social media, helping those in need.