Aam admi sending oxygen from China

Employees of a charitable society check an oxygen concentrator machine placed near beds for COVID-19 patients at a care centre in Amritsar on May 7, 2021. Pic/AFP

Hope can be found in unexpected places. Ritwik Ghosh, who works for one of the biggest investment fund firms in China, can vouch for it. Moved by the pain of members in his social circle back in India, Ghosh is on a mission to send help to people back home in the form of oxygen concentrators that are coming all the way from Shanghai.

It was in 2001 that Ghosh first discovered China, when he was a navigator of cargo ships that transported goods across the globe. Born to Bengali parents in the small town of Bokaro Thermal in Jharkhand [then Bihar], Ghosh says his background is humble. "My father was an engineer in Damodar Valley Corporation, along the Damodar river. He had a transferrable job. So, for the better part of my childhood, I was raised in Bokaro. After completing Class XII from Gomia's finest institute, Pitts Modern School, I moved to Delhi to do an introductory course in the merchant navy," Ghosh recalls, adding that he later moved to Singapore to complete his cadetship. While he briefly touched base in China, he only moved there in 2009, while studying for an MBA degree. "It has been over a decade [since he has been in China], but I visit India often."

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Around the time the World Health Organisation declared Coronavirus a global emergency in January 2020, after it hit China's Wuhan - where the epidemic is said to have originated - Ghosh had made plans to celebrate the Chinese New Year in Vietnam with family. In February that same year, he travelled to India to negotiate a deal with a client. "China had already gone into shutdown. The rest of the world, however, was still open. I remember telling my Indian friends that if a neighbour's house is on fire, you cannot be relaxed. We knew at that point that the neighbouring countries would be impacted, but were surprised that nothing was done about it in India. My return flight was booked for March 27. Indian authorities realised the gravity of the situation and closed international flight operations only on March 25."
Ghosh ended up staying back in India till September 2020. Until then, Covid-19 infection figures were merely statistics for him.

Ritwik Ghosh

It's in the second wave that hit India in March 2021 that he was shaken. He heard stories of family and friends falling sick back home, and soon the news of death began coming in. Ghosh says, "Within a month, a classmate lost his sister, a friend lost his father, another friend lost his uncle and my parents' close friends succumbed to the virus. It was more personal this time. I had to do something."

Since Ghosh has been involved in cross-border business for over a decade, his contacts from India reached out to him to see if he could help procure essential medical supplies like masks, oximeters and thermometers.

"In the first wave, a lot of people asked me to source supplies from Chinese businesses, but this time around, there was a demand for oxygen concentrators [devices that can help those who have saturation levels between 88 and 92]. Since I speak fluent Mandarin, it helped me act as a facilitator between Chinese suppliers and Indian buyers," he explains.

China is the world's largest manufacturer of oxygen concentrators. Ghosh used his network of clients and familiarised himself with the product first. He needed to know everything about the machine to be able to strike a fair negotiation before pieces could be dispatched to his Indian friends. "I am not doing this on a grand scale; I haven't tied up with an NGO or organisation. I am doing this in the capacity of an individual, so the pace is obviously slow. Also, to coordinate with Indian friends, I can only use WhatsApp, for which I need the VPN. Sometimes, therefore, communication delays the purchase of devices."

In the last one month, Ghosh has initiated close to 100 communication links between Indian buyers and Chinese sellers.

The day we reached out to Ghosh for this interview, he was stuck in a pickle. "I am as new to this as anyone else. It was a harrowing day. I had helped a friend's friend source five oxygen concentrators, and to expedite the process, I had paid the supplier. The devices were sent to India via air, but when the Indian friend was asking me for the airway bill number, I did not have the details. The seller's number was not reachable, and I was in a soup. Finally a day later, he called me back saying he had lost his phone. While I was relieved, I realised that had this gone wrong, my reputation would have been on the line. But, all is well that ends well."

Get in touch
If you or someone you know needs help with oxygen concentrators, write to Ghosh at ritwiksaddress@gmail.com