We knew which ICU had how many beds, could save many lives

When you first meet Kapil Chopra, you know he’s an outstanding hotelier, an enthusiastic art collector and genius entrepreneur, who was one of the youngest presidents of Oberoi Hotels, before he gave it all up to start his own chain of boutique properties, The Postcard Hotels. But dig a little deeper and you meet a Delhi boy with dreams, founder of an NGO called Charity Beds.

Chopra’s NGO has been instrumental in helping the capital fight Covid-19. But its story precedes the pandemic. He read an article on the right of the economically weaker section of society to hospital beds. “I learnt the Supreme Court had directed hospitals to put up boards in their lobby, listing beds available and occupied by the EWS. So I went to private hospitals and collected this information, put it up on charitybeds.com for any poor person to see which hospital had beds available for them,” he says.

The biggest problem in Delhi when the pandemic hit, Chopra says, was “availability of hospital beds. Due to our work over nine years we knew which ICU in which hospital had how many beds vacant. So while the authorities were saying there are 1,600 beds available, we countered them that 1,600 bed nahi, 60 beds hai!” He used social media to spread this. “I started tweeting live Covid updates of beds in every hospital! This was retweeted and we managed to save lives,” says a delighted Chopra.

And the HT Trailblazers presented by Ambience awardee worked selflessly. “Charity Beds doesn’t accept any donation. The work was funded out of my own money,” Chopra adds.