Hello and let's talk about the COVID-19 situation in India. The number of cases in India has crossed 6 lakh as it looks like India has soon set to be the country with the third highest number of cases reported overtaking Russia. Meanwhile, we are in this nebulous zone called Unlock 2.0 even as both the central and state governments have no clear answers as to the rising number of cases. Prime Minister Modi in his speech a few days ago stayed away from any concrete details on the government strategy. When Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thakre on Wednesday did a pooja and went on to say an I quote, we want to see a miracle, human beings are given up. We will discuss some of these issues but first here are some numbers. As of today morning nearly 6.04 lakh cases have been reported across India. India currently has the fourth highest number of cases behind the United States, Brazil and Russia. The number of active cases is around 2.26 lakh. Between 10.30 am yesterday and today 19,148 cases were reported during the same time period 2.29 lakh tests were conducted. The number of deaths in India is 17,834. We are 8th on the list of countries with the highest death toll and in the past 24 hours 4.34 deaths were reported. Maharashtra continues to be the worst affected state in the country with over 5,500 new cases reported yesterday and 198 deaths. The Thane Municipal Corporation, the Kalyan-Nobibali Municipal Corporation and the Meera-Bhayandar Municipal Corporation have all gone into total lockdown mode for 10 days from today. These three are part of the Mumbai metropolitan region. The corporations of Navi-Mumbai and Panvelu will follow suit tonight. Tamil Nadu and Delhi are the second and third worst affected states. The city of Chennai and parts of neighboring districts continue to be in lockdown as well. We have with us Prabir Purkayasar to talk about some of these issues. Thank you Prabir so much for joining us. So India continues to report a high number of new daily cases. We are almost close to the 20,000 cases a day mark. And right now it doesn't look like the government has too many answers. Like we just mentioned Prime Minister Modi has almost didn't talk any details in his speech. Neither are many of the chief ministers. So how do you see the rise in the number of cases happening especially over the next couple of weeks? Well if we look at the figures right now and I'm looking at the worldometer figures which gives you the total figures from different parts of the world country-wise also. You will see India is not only high in terms of the number of cases. It is the fourth highest but in a couple of days maybe two to three days it's going to overtake Russia and the third highest number of total cases. But if you look at the new cases that's where you will see the speed at which we are moving and that's quite disquieted because the US of course always holds the number one position with regard to total number of cases which is nearly now 3 million. Brazil is 1.5 million. We are at the moment about 600,000 plus. But in terms of new cases US is 51,000, Brazil is 44,000, 45,000. We are nearly 20,000 as you have said. And other countries are well below that. Below that is South Africa, Russia, Mexico and so on. What we are seeing is essentially a now two global centres of pandemic, new epicentre shall be said. Apart from the United States which continues to be the epicentre which is Latin America. It has Brazil. It has Mexico. It has Colombia. It has a number of other countries but these are the three major ones. And then we have South Asia, India and Pakistan, Pakistan is about 200,000 given its size of its population. I think that's also quite disquieting. So we are seeing a new epicentre emerging now with the COVID epidemic and that shows that we are in by no means in the home stretch globally as WHO's warned the numbers are going up and of course in India as well. If we look at the Indian figures first and looking at compared to the global figures, these are the charts we have. And as you can see, Malaysia which was lower than us initially in the first couple of weeks is now flattened. Most other countries which are the grip of epidemic earlier like Iran, Italy, France, UK all seem to have flat curves. Of course some of them as we know are seeing some recurrences again. But most of the European Union countries and even Iran and UK which were relatively badly affected earlier seem to have flattened. The only exception here which you can see on this chart is really Brazil and then India who are going up very steadily over the last 30, 40, 50 days. The slope in India has not changed of the graph over the last 50, 60 days and that's true for Brazil. Brazil we can understand because after all Brazil did not have any lockdown. India these figures are disturbing because we have had a very draconian lockdown on the most draconian in the world and yet our figures do not show any changes. And it does appear that the central government now has almost given up. It is offering nothing to the states and it's only thing that it has come out from the Modi's speech was about food grains but it really does not have anything else with respect to the epidemic. So I think that's a very disquieting scene that we see over there. The other part which I would like to focus on in terms of the epidemic itself that what are we are seeing now and this is again a disturbing issue that we are seeing about six cities having the bulk of the COVID infections. In this Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai almost cover 40% of India's total infections but that's not the full picture. If you add for instance to Delhi, Murugan, Faridabad, Noida and a couple of other urban areas as Mumbai you add for instance the Navi Mumbai you add Kalyan and other things but most important news you add Thane which is about 33,000 cases. You will get the picture is that this six cities including cities like Andhra Madh which are also fairly high figures you will see six cities nearly have 50 to 60% of the total COVID infected persons and this is because it's really spreading in urban areas in densely populated areas where this question of physical distancing it's a trend, isn't the rise and they also contain a very large number of what we are being called essential workers who effectively run the city and also work on healthcare facilities in a lot of the hospitals. So the centers of infection now are becoming those which are densely populated but people have to go out do go out and work in places where they are open to infections and you can see if we don't control those numbers you are going to see a continuous rise of the numbers and as of date there are steps that Maharashtra has taken vis-a-vis Mumbai particularly Mumbai they have seemed to have done some amount of control but it is exploded now in the suburbs or the urban continuum which is the Mumbai urban sprawl so to say and that's similar things we are also happening in Delhi we now know about Gurgaon and Faridabad but the figures from Noida etc seem to be underestimates maybe because the testing figures themselves are pretty low in those places but in terms of lockdowns and other containment zones Noida is not very far behind either right so and the key question here also is that we have discussed this of course that there was no real preparation done during the lockdown to strengthen the public health infrastructure there was no real attempt made to give it a community uh so give it a to give add a community element to combating the disease itself so right now as we as we are seeing a drastic impact can some of these steps be implemented or do governments have no other option but just sort of sit back and hope for the best like Uttar Pradesh said that we are hoping for a miracle well miracles aside I thought you can hope continue to hope for miracles but unless we do something miracles don't occur so one of the things we can do first is reduce the death rate one of the important lessons we have learned is that hospitals can handle this disease much better because you have a much better understanding of the disease today the two major reasons for deaths that are taking place the primary one and once you are very serious that this becomes a primary really issue is the inflammation of the lung it's no longer COVID-19 the disease itself it's not the virus itself that's a problem but the fact your body reacts against it and by reacting it actually overreacts leading to essentially damaging the lung in very different ways and that means the patient that needs to be provided oxygen and other support now while doing it earlier ventilators were used and people were intubated now they're finding oxygen support and controlling the infection by using corticosteroids dexamethasone is a obviously the primary one at the moment the dexamethasone brings down the inflammation it has to be controlled dosage because if it's given in a fairly reasonable dose not too high not too low then it sort of has the benefit of reducing the inflammation but does not really lead to antibodies or your immune system becoming lower so that you don't find the disease itself which is there of course the virus so both have to be sort of you have to hit the sweet spot so to say by which you don't give too high a dose and not too low a dose either which seems to have now been reached with the various information we have the second of course is the other one which has also been mentioned in the serious cases you get a certain number of cases but blood clotting is a serious issue and therefore medicines which lower or which are essentially blood thinners that seems to have helped so that worldwide seems to have brought down the the death figures compared to the number of hospitalization we have to see that this happens in Indian hospitals as well so this the question of intubation being not done quickly probably would also help because that itself has of course an adverse reaction on the patient then you may not need to intubate if you can provide oxygen supply initially and then control the inflammation this is what we seem to read in the various technical papers that we are now going through and the second part of it also is that you must have enough beds beds you must train in the hospital system now that is something which we should have done in all this period which we didn't do now we have we are opening covid hospitals for example in Delhi new hospitals but do they have the ability the preparation to be able to handle this disease is a key question we can take of course create new facilities which are for essentially quarantining not so serious patients but the next issue really apart from quarantine treat track all those things which are being said the question is to treat the serious patient so you bring down the death figures and that is something entirely doable at the moment of course we can only reduce them we cannot bring it down to zero and then secondly protecting the hospital staff and hospital itself not becoming a central infection unfortunately some of the steps we see apart from whether the protective gear etc available or not is also the fact that you then need to tell the doctors tell the nurses tell the health support staff what they have to do so that it is limited in the hospital and most important the hospital administration has to see how the covid and non-covid parts of the hospital can be separated other is one part of in fact the other the hospital will become as it has become in fact in large parts of the world including India as new centers of the epidemic and that would be disastrous when treating the epidemic you're actually creating more problems and more infections so I think these are two things the government should have done and this needed coordinated work with the government of India and the state governments the last part which you have raised should we give up the spread of the epidemic no I think you still have to trace track quarantine these are three measures we still have to take and we have to also involve as you said not only the administrative apparatus but also involve the people it cannot be done without the large-scale support of the people now the only support that people have been asked to express is Halib Bajana bang your pots and vessels and then switch off your lights for 10 minutes that is not an involvement of the people involvement of the people has to be at the grassroots level which is where Kerala really scores they have involved the panchayats they have involved the state administration they have involved the whole number of voluntary systems which exist in Kerala which work all the time and they have supported the government by doing other you know support activities so it's a whole range of support that needs to be provided instead of teaching it treating it as a law and order problem you can even see I was looking at the pictures in the morning on television police brandishing their latis and we had a very strange case in Telangana where in Hyderabad affidavit has been filed in court which says that the police constables or officers were checking coronavirus presence in the people with the latis now if that is your understanding of the health system that you can check coronavirus infection using latis we are indeed in trouble and I think it's that approach that that also marks the way we are not able to involve the people because you know brandishing latis does not really get shall we say it may get compliance but it doesn't really get cooperation and involvement and I think that's the key issue where we are lacking because it's a mystery Brazil did not do a lockdown they have a rate of curve which is quite high United States as you know had lockdowns sporadically did it lay didn't have testing properly and now it's the process of lifting lockdowns again and you can see the lockdowns correlate fairly well to the infections they have opened the lifted the lockdowns infections have started going up rapidly India you see irrespective of what we do a very steady growth which means our long term was ineffective and the steps we are taking are also proving to be equally ineffective so I think this is where we need to analyze and then take corrective action I think giving up is not an option because this will destroy the economy it's not going to restore the economy but if the infections are there people are not going to strong to the shops buying stuff people are not we will be able to turn off our work so the economic downturn will continue we are looking at a five to seven percent drop of GDP which is probably very conservative so I think that the precondition for winning the battle again on the economic front it really hinges on winning the battle against COVID-19 therefore I don't think this giving up or waiting for a miracle is an option at all thank you so much for talking that's all we have in this episode let's talk we'll be back tomorrow with major news developments from the country until then keep watching news click


Hi Josh. Hi Amit. Thank you guys so much for joining the Zoom. We are here for the United Global Compacts Uniting Business Live in conjunction with as guest of the Global Futures Lab at Arizona State University. So welcome and it's been a crazy year and we're just here to talk about all the new business models that are coming out of COVID and Amit I know you've really at the forefront of a lot of technologies sitting on the west coast and thought maybe you could start. For sure Tess. Thank you very much. Thank you all the organizers. Josh is an absolute pleasure to be doing this panel with you. Let me just introduce myself a little bit. We run a seed focus fund in Palo Alto at the heart of Silicon Valley, $17 million. We invest in applied artificial intelligence across three different verticals, digital health enterprise and automation. So cars, drones, robots. As of the taping of this event we have 13 investments. It's all on our website tauventures.com and we include companies like iterative scopes that uses computer vision to detect colon cancer during a colonoscopy. Early detection of cancer is the key for treating it and saving a life and it obviously saves a lot of money and time energy for everybody. Whether it's doctors, nurses, patients, their families. We also have another company that uses machine learning to figure out biomarkers and genetic sequences and identify potential drug targets or develop antibodies. And this is a company that just came out of stealth last week after having raised $10 million in the seed. We're very proud of them. It's called TOTINT. They announced a big partnership with Ginko and something that we should all be rooting them for is that they are developing antibodies against COVID and cancer. We also have companies in food automation. So robotic arm to make smoothies. This one is very tasty to diligence, I assure you. I got to try lots of fun smoothies called blended. There's a beautiful video on their site. If anybody wants to take a look. We also have companies in enterprise that are doing cyber security DevOps. And this is to keep all of us safe, right? Our data, our emails, our social media and so on. In general, where the theme with all of this is COVID has really accelerated a lot of trends. We were investing in believers in telehealth and contactless food preparation and using large amounts of data to analyze and find out insights. Like we were believers in all of that. COVID has just accelerated these secular trends. So in many ways, we feel that we were ahead of the curve and now we're very glad that there's more money coming into healthcare. There's more money coming into automation. I think it will take the collective efforts of various members of society, whether it's investors, entrepreneurs, the public sector to solve some of the biggest problems that humanity is facing right now. So I'll pass it over to Josh, I guess. Hey, man, that's tough to follow. You did some pretty cool work. I've seen your website. So Tess, do you want me to just roll into it? Can you go ahead? No, I think that I think just once you'd give us the background and we can start the conversation, I just think the two of you are going to be exceptional on this panel. Excellent. So my name is Josh Cohen. I'm a partner at a venture fund in New York City called City Like Capital. We've been around for about 16 years. We invest in experienced entrepreneurs that are using technology to make the world safer, smarter, and more sustainable. The sectors in which we invest are safety and care, education, and environmental companies. And I believe part of the question was around how the market has transpired for our portfolio in a COVID or against the backdrop of a global pandemic. And a lot of our companies have been accelerated over the last six months. We have a strong history in investing in mental health and online education. Telehealth had a roughly 7% penetration rate pre-COVID and roughly overnight or very, very quickly. 100% of us were interacting with doctors via telehealth. Online education, similar. I mean, I have three boys and they're all in school online even today. And so just to give you a sample of some of the companies we've invested in so you have a sense of what I'm talking about, I'll give you one in each sector. And so in the education marketplace, we were early investors in a company called Trilogy, which runs boot camps through the brand of large nonprofit universities. And so you can get a certificate in data science or digital marketing or UIUX or cybersecurity through places like Columbia or Northwestern or North Carolina or Georgetown in ways that lead to high quality outcomes and good jobs for people who need it. Within the safety and care bucket, we're large investors at a company called Ready Responders, which has an on-demand network of part-time EMTs, nurses, fire, police, and others that provide non-emergency medical care. Wherever people need it, roughly 100% of the time. And so we're even providing home-based care, which includes COVID-19 testing. Pre-COVID, we were live in Las Vegas and Nevada. We're now live in Las Vegas, Nevada, New York, Baltimore, D.C., Virginia, Los Angeles, and Miami-Dade County. And so we've seen some pretty astronomical growth. And in the climate sector, we're investors in a company called Ohm Connect, which is focused on consumer focused demand response. So in times when there's an increase in demand on the energy grid, like we saw heavily in the month of August in California, instead of turning on additional plants to increase the supply of energy, we're able to reduce the consumption in the homes that we partner with and sell that capacity back to the grid. So in a large part because the great work that folks at Ohm Connect did over the last few weeks, we avoided major blackouts and brownouts in many parts of the state of California. Sorry about that. Are you guys seeing that with this new environment, are you getting more companies along the same? Because these are companies you were already invested in. They're your portfolio companies. But what are the new pitches looking like? Are they also in the same space or are you seeing something a little different? Maybe I'll take that one. And so we've been a very active investor over the last six months. We have two vehicles. And so we write either two to $3 million series A checks with the target of owning between five and 10% of companies. Or we also have a seed vehicle where we make $50,000 checks. And we expect we'll make between 100 and 150 impact oriented investments through that vehicle over the next few years. In fact, that vehicle's about a year old and we've made 52 investments already.  Wow, that's amazing though that you've had that that you're that active in the last six months because you're actually quite I guess you because you've been in the space for so long companies know to go to you. Ahmed, are you seeing anything like that on the West Coast? Or is it really just New York as we got so we got hit a lot harder? No, no, no, I think the a lot of what Josh is saying resonates. There's a couple of other factors about us. We did our final close, we did a publicity, we were on the front page of tech run. So all of that extra exposure meant that we got a lot more deal flow. Our deal flow essentially doubled between pre COVID and post COVID. Some of it is a function once again of us rather than the environment. But I think there's a lot to be said. There's an entrepreneurial activity continues strong. The types of pitches we obviously have noted, many more companies position themselves for this new reality. And talking about how they have a solution that will work in this new reality. And obviously, this is something they're very sensitive to. But our goal in investing is that the company's product work beyond this new reality. Our belief is that COVID is going to be with us for a while, let's say two years, barring some major development in the world, but that the world will come back to what it used to be. Maybe not the same, but it will come back to pre COVID. So we want to make sure that those companies are not just COVID companies, but that they will be sustainable beyond what has changed for us really, it's not what we invest in, but how we invest in. So we're looking for companies that have a little bit more runway that are raising a little bit more capital that are bringing in investors like Josh, who have a little bit deeper pockets than ourselves. Because our check size tends to be 250 to 500 at the seed stage versus Josh's fund has a bigger fund behind him. So we like to partner at the seed stage. And what I want to highlight to all entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs is that seed stage is much more collaborative. Everybody around the table, investors, entrepreneurs, they all try to deliver the risk and make sure the company succeeds. Growth stage tends to become much more competitive because at the growth stage, everybody's fighting for the smaller and smaller remaining pieces of a very successful company. And do you guys think you are using different profiles of entrepreneurs or are they the same kind of entrepreneurs pre COVID? I'll take that one. We have noticed a slight change. A lot of folks that might have left their jobs at Google or Facebook or stable companies, because of the pandemic, they're seeking a little bit more stability. But there are a fair number of people still leaving those companies to start the new projects. What we have noticed is a little bit more deeper tech entrepreneurs, folks coming from academia, folks coming from venture studios, folks coming from accelerators and incubators that are more science focused. So we're hearing less pitches about travel. We're hearing less pitches about rentals. We're hearing less pitches that are focused on consumer demand. And that is to be expected. Consumer demand has plummeted, even if the economy has stayed resilient. But we have high levels of unemployment in the US globally. What we're hearing more is science-based pitches. So we're hearing a lot more healthcare, as you would expect. And this is something that we were already doing in our fund. 50% or more of the fund was already healthcare. We're just hearing a lot more of it. And how about you, Josh? Is it the same or different on these? So I would say that our, the entrepreneurs that we're seeing in the marketplace have become more diverse. We're seeing more women. We're seeing more minority entrepreneurship across the board. And we're excited about that. In fact, in our seed portfolio, 41% of the portfolio have women in their C-suite, if not at the CEO level. We have somewhat of an unfair advantage as it relates to deal flow, which was certainly benefited us during the time of a quarantine. We've created a serious amount of technology internally that we lovingly call the machine, which is pulling data from various sources on the web, plus a few proprietary sources that nets us somewhere in the north of 50,000 newer updated companies a month. We have a massive funnel for deal flow and have built a bunch of technology tools to allow us to filter and sort and use natural language processing and machine learning to find sectoral fits and things that are likely a fit for us. And so during this time, especially, we've had a tremendous amount of outreach for companies that we've identified, leveraging technology in these data tools that we've been able to develop relationships over a short period of time. Gee, Josh, I feel like are you selling or are you renting out your technology? Because it seems like if more companies did that, we could really be much more aggressive in channeling and touching on all those diverse entrepreneurs. We're not. We use that technology to benefit our investors. So it's specific. But we've spent a lot of time thinking about this. We've spent the last two plus years building it. We've been using it for significantly north of a year. But we do recognize there's the potential for things like historical bias to be carried over in a legacy data set. And so we're spending a lot of time thinking about what are alternative data sets that we can inject into our technology to make sure that we are seeing a diverse representation of entrepreneurs and making sure that we find the best entrepreneurs building the most competitive solutions to the largest problems that we're dealing with today and tomorrow. And I also think that there's a lot of investors, like hearing what you just said, I am certain that I've got at least a dozen investors that want to send your way just because the fact that you have found a way to find these entrepreneurs and find these gaps specifically in the health and the education, which is critical. I think it's pretty exciting because I didn't realize that you had that technology or that profile. And I don't think you advertise that much on it yet. It's new. We're just starting to increase our outreach now. And so we'd be happy to talk to those 12 folks and whoever else you think. Yeah, I think so. So I wanted to find out, because the UN Global Compact is all about trying to find partnerships to collaborate. And with your young companies, how could governments and corporates help if there's a way? Because your young companies are the ones who are going to create all the jobs, right? And so the corporates, the governments, even the multilaterals like the United Nations, as well as academia, they're all trying to find partnerships that can help create jobs. And so do you guys have any ideas? Tons, tons of ideas. So I mean, I have worked at corporates, as has my business partner. We come out of Google and Microsoft and Samson and McKinsey. And I've invested out of a corporate VC fund. I was investing out of Samson. So I think, let me start with corporates. Corporates can obviously take a startup that's fledgling that doesn't have revenues and give it that key contract that helps them get to the Series A and further milestones in healthcare to take as an example. That key contract from that provider, that hospital, or eventually from that payer, meaning the insurance, puts your company on the map. One metric that at least in the US we have oftentimes is that are you hitting the one million annual recurring revenue, ARR? If you are, then you're probably ready for product market fit. The metric obviously varies based on sectors and obviously on geography, but that's a good guideline. So in healthcare, obviously getting into hospital systems is huge. When it comes to automation, a lot of what we do actually, the two key values is helping you get new contracts and we'll reach out to car manufacturers and factory developers and we will say, hey, here's a company we have invested in or hey, here's a company we are considering, they could actually provide a solution for you. Whether it is a cloud platform for robotics, which is actually a portfolio company of ours called Freedom Robotics, or whether it is commercializing your kitchen, your back kitchen and chopping those vegetables and peeling your potatoes more efficiently. There's tons and tons of different business models that corporates can do. Corporates beyond just the contract that can help co-develop, they can eventually invest themselves. They may be able to acquire the company down the road, which is something that obviously as investors we're also looking for is eventually an exit. Governments, on the other hand, are not acquirers, but governments can, it's a deep science company. They can provide grants, NSF and NIH here in the US provide tons of money, and if you look at COVID, there's a lot of COVID solutions that have been funded by the government. And I'm a big believer that the government can actually take an industry that's not quite yet fully built out and give it the grounding, the foundation to go to that level. If you look at GovTech in general, a lot of investors shy away from it, we don't. We have considered very seriously GovTech investments. My last investment in my previous job was a GovTech investments called rapid deploy, and it was really rapid in terms of growth because what happens with government, if you know how to work well, is that you can get large contracts that are for multiple years rather than having to go seek smaller and smaller contracts and being in that rat race. So I think that there's smart ways of working with the government also. And are you just talking about the US government, or are you also talking about, do you work with other governments outside the US? We invest in companies based in US and Canada. Now we are very friendly towards companies that have a go-to market perhaps outside of those countries and a development team outside, and in fact, half of our portfolio deployed in other countries first. A company that tests you and I have talked about previously called Biosia. It's based in New York, and they analyze the genetic sequence of pathogens to identify whether there's been a contamination. This is huge for COVID. They were doing it before COVID. You can imagine a disease like CDIF. If you identify it in a hospital, you can prevent a contamination from spreading. You save time, money, and lives. They were deployed in Thailand first and foremost, with the biggest hospital in Thailand. And I believe the hospital was affiliated with the government also. And we have invested in companies that have looked at NIH in the UK, which A&HS, I'm sorry, not NIH. A&HS is the biggest health system in the UK. It's a single pair system. And we have looked at companies that have worked with governments in emerging markets. I've looked into a company that was doing drone delivery in India and in Rwanda. So there's many, many ways of building a business model outside of the U.S. also. We just happen to invest in companies whose core market is the U.S. and Canada. Got it. And Josh, how about you? How would you like to work with the corporates in or the governments? Often. I mean, corporates, in many cases, there are clients. There are customers. There are partners. You know, we're selling, you know, Ginger, for example, is providing 24-7 text-based access to mental health coaches through some of the more progressive and larger employers out there in the world. And we think they're doing phenomenal work, and we would love more employers to want to provide this service to their employees. On the government side, I would love to see a more progressive policy around climate change. I would love to see more national and global attention focused on mental health. But I don't think, like, I think that government can be an accelerator, but I don't think that entrepreneurs need government to come up with creative solutions that can scale. And so we're incredibly inspired and impressed by the work that's being done every single day in this country by entrepreneurs that are really moving the needle in ways that can affect millions of lives at scale. So what's interesting is the UN Global Compact, you had mentioned that 41%, I think 41% of your portfolio or your new seed where you've invested have women in the C-suite. So there are commitments. There's a platform on the women empowerment principles where more than 4,000 corporates of scientists source from women-owned firms. That might be a nice to put your portfolio companies connected to that group because those companies have made that commitment and they're constantly searching, especially for young companies that they can help groom and seed. And what the corporates nice offer is also they have these training programs where they would love to have staff help you create new opportunities between the two of them. So that's something to put on everyone's radar screen as well. Yeah, the other thing I would add is that as it relates to gender, we just happened to think that backing diverse teams actually build more valuable companies. And so we created we funded these businesses because we think that's actually a better solution for creating more valuable companies that affect more lives. As it relates to government, the other ask that I would have of government to the extent that there are governments around the world listening to this conversation, you all have a huge megaphone in ways that you can decide and influence what news is shared and how to your population. And to the extent we can put a spotlight on entrepreneurs that are doing things in a way that you want future entrepreneurs to emulate and can recognize the great work being done by entrepreneurs around the world by building businesses that are both achieving financial success but doing it a way that has measurable social impact. That would be a huge benefit to all stakeholders involved. That's great. So I think we've covered the questions that I wanted and just wanted to see if you guys wanted to to if there's anything that you wanted to put out there that we didn't cover in the five more minutes that we have to discuss if there was any one of your companies that you're especially excited about that perhaps looking for a new market or perhaps you have an entrepreneur that you want to highlight. Anything like that? Let me let me highlight one if I may. So Christina Lopez is the CEO co-founder of One Health Company, the product called FidoCure. And if you have a dog or if you have anybody you know who has a dog who might be at risk of cancer or actually suffering from cancer please look up their product. They have saved thousands of lives of dogs so far. They help match the dogs to the right kind of treatment and dogs unfortunately are the animals that get the most amount of cancer. Thanks to us we have bred so many dogs so quickly that they become more prone to disease. Eventually this database that they're building could come in useful for all kinds of animals including us humans. So I thought I would shamelessly advertise her company because I think in COVID times it's become even more challenging to get healthcare. Dogs last time I checked can't do telehealth that easily so this could be a good solution for many many people. Josh do you have anything? And I'll give a shout out to two rock star female entrepreneurs that I admire and we're fortunate enough to have partnered with. One is a woman named Erica Mackie who runs a company called My Village. If Bright Horizons and Airbnb had a baby it would be My Village. The other is a woman named Naomi Allen who used to be the head of she was a co-founder of Castlight and then she ran growth for Livongo and she's now focusing her talents on mental health for kids which I think is incredibly important both as an investor but also more importantly as a dad. Yeah mental health is really especially the last few months has really taken a toll on our young people and it's good that there is such tools now that are becoming available. Naomi's company by the way is called Brightline. Brightline okay thank you because I think we might actually invite those women to our March event which is when we celebrate the Women's International Women's Day and we're always looking for female entrepreneurs specifically in technology because they're really hard to find. Tess then let me make sure Neem O'Hara from Biosia would also be a very good addition for this event. Okay definitely. We've got lots of them and they do a far better job talking about their companies than I would. No and this is exciting and I get you know and as I said a lot of this is new information to a lot of new people and I hope all our audience and the fact that this is going to be taped and available for a long time I think is going to be exciting to all. So I just want to thank you both very much for joining us today and I'm looking forward to having you back on because I think there's going to be so much more to share. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me. Hope to see you guys. So wonderful to see you guys. So today we have Sandra DeSosa who's calling in from Sydney Australia and she's the founder and CEO of Elect and we have Paolo Delzoto Ferrari who's calling in from northern Italy and she is the president and founder of the Academy di Gliato Gubale. So welcome. Would love to hear what you ladies have started during this crazy pandemic. Paolo do you want to go first? Yeah well first thing I want to say is that I saw today the report of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that indicates that in 25 weeks the progress of development you know there's been a regression of 25 years. So this is a stunning conclusion of a very short time of converging catastrophes and as the Academy di Gliato Gubale we are interested in using science as a tool to engage communities and especially young people into a conversation on where do the solutions for this alien world come from and we think that science provides most if not all of those solutions. We want to see more children interested in science and pursuing career. In STEM we want to see more girls as part of this group. The Academy di Gliato globale was born in a very small town in the foothills of Calabria the poorest region of Europe and brings in international scientists for a five-day gathering where great science is developed. We had the research paper exchanges of students who we had we had the company that was where were born from these gatherings but also we have the the minglin with the population and the co-creation of so many projects that have brought hope and you know revived the entrepreneurial spirit of the town resources that were dormant through the activation of local resources with injection of international scientists and young people coming from universities in many parts of the world. We were able to kick off a very virtual cycle that transformed this town. Once we developed this model we felt ready to distill the main components of this experiment and we were able to bring it to other places and so we created the Academy di Gliato globale. We are no longer talking of this small town in Calabria as a place where now that's living in renaissance in you know under all aspects and really weather very well the challenges of the pandemic also because of the social fabric that was strengthened through the experience of also going through the the Academy di Gliato initiatives but we brought this to another small communities in the mountains of northern Italy. We went to Swansea in Galles and now we are ready with the stakeholders already mobilized in Nepal in New York Kathmandu and we are thinking of taking it to other places in particular the Middle East where we think we can bring a difference to the especially the children in the refugee camps. We have local resources, local scientists that want to be involved in projects where children that we think the talent in universal opportunities not so what what we are and want to do is just bring opportunities to children to open the horizons of their minds and have them through a process of you know of you know science pursued and hopefully starting of companies you know that are science inspired. So Paula I know I've had the great fortune of attending two of your sessions in Calabria and I just think you know joining it virtually was such an eye-opener to see the northern Italians really focusing now on sustainable energy is sustainability and bringing it out to the northern communities and I think the value that I found in attending your sessions was just how you brought the world's best scientists to one small town and activated them. Now I'd love to hear from how Sandra is actually doing the same thing but she's using technology to connect everyone where you're training you know young minds bring scientists activating them at the very core roots into these new learning communities and learning parts Sandra's actually connecting small businesses around the world and Sandra can you tell us a little bit about what you've been doing. Oh Tess and I just want to say thank you for having me being part of this panel. So I've founded ELECT which is a start off as a digital marketplace connecting small business with corporate and government buyers and every transaction on the digital marketplace funds a project addressing gender equality. So that has been the start of with what we're doing and what we've bound through COVID is there's a need there's an immediate need for a lot of small businesses to really embrace the digital platform and and sorry digital platform and and because from the loss of the bricks and mortar format and so what happened so with that in mind the corporate side they've also lost a lot of access to overseas suppliers because of borders being closed or the the lockdown and then I'm getting this demand where the corporate are looking at supply diversity looking at small businesses to help meet the demand of their needs through the supply chain and so this is where ELECT comes in through COVID that was able to get these small businesses online get their profile available digitally and as well as being able to trade digitally and then bring in the corporate buyers who can access the small businesses and diversify the supply chain and be able to you know continue to create that profitability which they still need to do within the supply chain and not have that hinder through the lack of access from overseas suppliers and are you guys both seeing you know you're both operating globally why haul on the global educational perspective and you Sandra on small businesses what difference do you see around the world because things are progressing very differently since the beginning of this pandemic and it'd be interesting you know if you want to start Sandra just what differences are there um do you know for the first time in many years I'm seeing that the small businesses are embracing the digital format and actually understanding that they really need to be agile what I'm also seeing is the corporate and government are open to working with small businesses in a really in a very um fast tracked way um like actually pushing for that so instead of me trying to pull them into bringing them in onto the to the table to talk about supply diversity and and connecting these two groups they're they're actually seeking it and so I'm finding that the doors are open the conversations are happening and actions that are actually being made which is a very exciting time for us um and especially around on a global scale as well and what I mean global scale is not talk about the scale of global I'm talking about seeing similarities across various countries around the world who are embracing the need for supply diversity and Pa I know you've seen yeah yeah what we've seen is that with the transition to digital the digital world the community that are the focus of our attention the small underprivileged underserved communities they are suffering an additional degree of poverty because you know digital literacy and availability of digital equipment is certainly not uh one of the resources the small communities the peripheral communities the community at the margin uh have in in the message sufficient supply so there's a the digital gap that I think it's widening and is making the you know the the the this part of the spectrum toward you know the the poverty even you know even more pronounced and more difficult so I think that all efforts that go in the direction of bridging this this digital divide and creating communities that are intelligent you know not only the big cities but also the very small communities this is where you know so many businesses can can can start but unless there's a you know diffused literacy in these communities and wi-fi and connectivity brought to the small communities they're going to be the big losers of what we call the great reset it's actually that's a great segue because if you had a wish list of how governments corporates or even universities can help you sounds like paul you have a pretty good hand on what your ask would be well first of all I I'm encouraging all corporations to look at equals.com which is a call a phenomenal coalition of so many partners and bpw is a part of this coalition and I'm privileged to serve her as the liaison what the equals coalition does is look at three levels the skills the access and literally the leadership levels to bring everywhere to women but at this point I'm I'm sure you know that the scope of the mission is going to extend you know even beyond trying to increase a possibility for people that are now excluded to this which has become a resource you cannot live without to be equipped and fitted for what whatever is next. Sandra how can corporates and governments well you know I need to I guess we're connected with corporate and government buyers so definitely would like the corporate and government to have a look at the platform which is elect.biz and and and you know be and see the importance of trying to connect to the small business communities and the small business communities include minorities includes women owned businesses and and their um or indigenous owned businesses and this variety of business and and I keep using the word supply diversity research have shown that it's actually has proven to be uh proven to to increase profitability of businesses so it's not just about doing good but you can actually see that increased profitability is actually an outcome of supply diversity if I could give you one example of one of the corporate buyer which is a large organization in food manufacturing who is looking at who was looking at producers of a certain fruit and and what we were able to do was to actually get them small farmers who produce this fruit to connect with the corporate buys and be part of the supply chain but it's and it's beyond just the transactional this is all about embracing the small business community to be part of the larger corporate government supply chain and essentially not only helping you know in terms of the economic side of it of the value but also the financial and the social metrics that comes with it I think a couple of other things I'm thinking of in terms of us yes one thing that I think this credible crisis brought to us is a sense of being part of you know really our community our role as citizens has become you know very prominent so initiatives like the one that we offer the of community engagement by people that can be you know also very unlikely stakeholders in the community still it's important to raise awareness of the contribution that each one of us can bring to the place where they live so initiatives like the you know we encourage you know corporations to you know to try and imagine how their workforce can be encouraged to participate to projects in their community and activities like the one that we've been thinking of in doing in Calabria in three events at Julia in Galles and we are ready to deploy elsewhere you know if there's an availability for you know for being involved on the part of corporation bring their workforce or as sponsors one the other thing that I'm thinking of in terms of corporations and contributions to what we are doing we really care for having more women in STEM and to create this pipeline of women that get into starting startups that they are very successful and one initiative I'm very familiar with because there was a part of it is the one for example by Lamborghini Lamborghini is a phenomenal Italian company devoted to excellence and you know great design they set up an award that went goes every year to a girl innovator under the age of 30 and the opportunities that the company offers to girls to be supported and enabled through this difficult process of establishing and becoming an entrepreneurial success this is really important and lastly this time we see that colleges have a hard time offering you know benefits opportunities resources to their students and again the Accademia di Galli Alto globale is developing a system of ebreed internships we have the villages the communities where we have so many projects going on we have been partnering with several academic universities the new castles university university of Westminster there are so many entities that you know are eager to you know work with the population of this context and have their students research do field work and co-create solutions for these communities together so this is another you know a range of possibilities for you know for giving that though I know that companies at the same time can get a lot out of these experiences as well if not you know unilateral direction well because I mean I think what's happening is that partnerships is so critical to get out of what we're going through right now and it's this global shared aspiration to make things better so I think what's interesting Paula is you know let's say you're on one end of the spectrum which you're trying to create this pipeline let's say of females and STEM and then that progresses all the way to where they end up starting businesses and that's where they end up on Sandra's platform and we all three of us have been so fortunate of being part of this global network of women called business professional women BPW international and I think you know what ways do you think that you know connecting our programs together whether it's through a shared organization like BPW or maybe it's this shared university who's who's interested in doing research on this pipeline what what ideas do you guys think we should explore as a group I mean that's a thing I'm just whatever that could be I just think that we've all been thinking about how we can work together more so than how we're competing because at this moment in time everybody's kind of needs to find something to connect right because we're doing this all virtually any ideas I mean collaboration I was going to say I mean partnership collaboration I mean we talk about the network of at least you know we're now aware of this work that you know that test you brought us together and and something that you're absolutely right that we shouldn't I mean not that we power and I are competing but you know not working silos I think there's too much of the silos and I think power you was beginning to talk that this digital format and the way that we are now connecting so much more through the platform is really let's bring it all together and and let's actually even let's see how we connect as a program so that I recognize powers work as a pipeline for a lake for example and and Paolo knows that there is the next phase of your program to where to go to and maybe that's a starting point as an idea what do you think Paolo? No I totally agree with you and I think that at this time where you know the the objective of achieving the SDG by 2015 it's going a little bit further down in the horizon so there's no time to waste no resources to waste and no opportunity to collaboration we cannot reinvent you know something that has been already developed in one place and we know of it we need to bring it you know to join forces and make everything that's available you know optimize and capitalize on all resources in terms of solutions of platforms everything needs to there's a more urgent sense of purpose I think now we really need to accelerate again we lost 25 years in 25 weeks how terrible is that so we really need to I think just you know talking to our organizations too this is what I did you know I called up my people and I said hey guys the situation is getting almost dire we need to do more of what we've been doing do it better doing further so I think this is again the sense of urgency and purpose should be really emphasized at this time we have no time to waste we wasted 25 years in 25 weeks and it was amazing because actually Sandra corrected me when I told her that I thought maybe her website was too gender focused and not focused on actually bringing and delivering value to the platforms then Sandra if you want to share that dialogue that we had where you told me no no no corporates really want to to help at this point I think I understand Tess when when you know we do worry that if we're talking about gender equality might be something that turned corporates off but I can tell you and I'm sharing you know the exciting news or the exciting phase is that the sort of dialogue and embracing that the social impact is actually coming from corporates and they find that's what's appealing with elect is is yes the primary focus is supply diversity and embracing the small business community but gender equality actually again research from BCG and and also from other universities have shown that equal men and women participation in the entrepreneurial ventures it can doubles the GDP if you like I said I mentioned supply diversity in in corporates actually increased profitability so it's not just about doing social good it's seeing that gender equality is no longer a taboo topic and I'm seeing a push from from corporates who are now seeing understanding that it actually means I mean I'm not saying the profitability is the only goal but it's no longer mutually exclusive I think that a polished passion in saying hey we got to do something fast because of what's happening in the last uh I mean that that sense of urgency is spot on programs that the UN Global Compact has on focusing on genders I mean they originated the women empowerment principles which many corporations had signed up on and of which BPW had promoted around the world and I think that perhaps there's a new uh renewed interest in really using you know this crisis and deploying resources against those initiatives that kind of yeah they were good but now you know we need to get the biggest bang out of the buck so how can we allocate the funds towards the recovery towards programs that not only save the accounting but also fuel the growth so I think that um you know they have the target gender is one of the big programs out of the UN Global Compact that they're really launching with big uh with fanfare now and I think um but program but and again it's organizations like BPW International um who's using its networks and its members to take it forward um but thank you so much you guys uh oh I I have to also give another shout out to Arizona State University and their global futures lab I mean what the Wrigley found uh sustainability practice and Amanda Alice is doing over there in promoting all of this is is is great as well and you've worked Sandra with um Amanda and some of those programs right yeah yeah no no Amanda and her amazing work for the past 20 years that she's done as well yes I think it's uh you know this it it's time it's our time right yeah thank you so much and thank you thank you thank you Sandra see you next time so please thank you thank you