By Sekhar Seshan. Consulting Editor, Business India

Any odds can be overcome through collective efforts, believes Sailesh C Mehta, chairman & managing director of Deepak Fertilisers and Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd (DFPCL). The Pune-headquartered company and its CSR arm, Ishanya Foundation, have donated 2,500 personal protective equipment (PPE) kits for use by the government’s healthcare employees, as well as four ambulances to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and more than 1,000 litres of isopropyl alcohol-based hand sanitisers to the chief minister’s office and other government agencies.

Being a producer of essential commodities like IPA and fertilisers, the company’s manufacturing facilities - at Taloja in Maharashtra, Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh, Panipat in Haryana and Dahej in Gujarat - are in operation as per the directive of the government, despite the challenges of the lockdown, to cater to the country’s needs in these times of distress.

DFPCL also supplied essential raw materials to the army in and around Pune Garrison during the pandemic to prepare hand sanitiser, while its employees collected money among themselves and gave a total of Rs38.7 lakh to the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund. Women apprentices from the Foundation’s income generation programme made and donated 4,000 masks. Ishanya’s mobile clinic has treated more than 10,000 patients in 40 villages around its plant in Taloja, Raigad district of Maharashtra. Some 3,000-plus of these were during the lockdown.

It donated food grains and other essential items to migrant labourers, too, as well as hand sanitisers, masks and other resources to the frontline Covid warriors: the medical fraternity, police and local communities.

“Ever since the outbreak of Covid-19 in the country, DFPCL has been relentlessly contributing towards the nation’s fight against this calamity,” Mehta adds. “While the nameless and faceless heroes are putting their lives on the line to ensure that the nation overcomes this global pandemic, we consider it an honour to contribute to the cause – in terms of our efforts as well as resources – and will continue to contribute to the best of our ability towards overcoming the crisis.”