At KiwiTech, the health and safety of our customers, partners, investors, and employees is of paramount importance. Our management team has had a good deal of discussion about the global concerns regarding COVID-19 and efforts to contain the spread of this virus. Out of an abundance of caution, we are taking the steps listed below at KiwiTech to protect our ecosystem.

Events

Over the last few years, KiwiTech events have been a major building block of our startup ecosystem. Thousands of present stakeholders began their journey meeting us at KiwiSocials, Kiwi Demo Days, Kiwi Launch Parties and more recently Kiwi 808 Startup Workshops. 

We have taken special precautions to ensure that our high-value networking opportunities are not impacted during this outbreak. As leaders in the innovation space, we had launched our first Online Demo Day on February 5, 2020, and have successfully organized three more since then. The level of engagement and participation from startups and investors in an online format exceeded our expectations. Based on the success of these online events and our social responsibility to eliminate large group meetings for a period of time, we are moving all of our Demo Days and Workshops to an online format through the end of June.

Travel

Employees earlier scheduled for international travel for work-related reasons have been asked to cancel their trips and convert in-person meetings to video meetings. Employees traveling domestically within the U.S. have been asked to report their nature of travel, get approval from their respective manager, and have been advised to avoid non-essential travel.

Employees - Delhi Office

Our HR team is on a high alert tracking the health of each individual employee and has measures in place to prevent any employee experiencing symptoms to report to duty. We will encourage employees who are not well or who have to use public transport to work from home and we are in the process of acquiring additional laptop computers to be able to accommodate this. We have provided hand sanitizers at multiple locations across the three floors of our office and are bringing on additional cleaning staff to more frequently sanitize the office. Our office is equipped with state-of-the-art air purifying systems that use a high-efficiency filter to circulate air and remove a considerable number of airborne particles. Also, we canceled two company social events which were a three-day camp outing (March 5th to 8th) for employees at a local hill station and a Holi Festival celebration party (March 5th) to limit larger group gatherings.

Employees - U.S. Offices

With the larger number of confirmed cases in the U.S., our U.S. employees have been asked to work from home and change their in-person meetings to video meetings wherever possible. Moving our Demo Days and Workshops online through the end of Q2, will help to protect our employees, startups, and investors.

We believe that the current unprecedented set of events calls for creative solutions to deliver better outcomes and to ensure the health and well-being of those around us. If there was a time to make an impact through innovation, technology and entrepreneurship, THE TIME IS NOW.

We will continue to monitor the impact of COVID-19 since the situation is fluid and rapidly changing. Please do be careful and take the necessary precautions to stay healthy. 

Thank you and stay safe,

Rakesh Gupta

CEO and Co-Founder

Useful Reads

Basic protective measures against the new coronavirus

Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

COVID-19: Implications for business