For the top leadership of Deepak Group, India’s leading conglomerate of chemical companies, one of the foremost key lessons during the pandemic has been the importance of ‘lives, livelihood and good health’.

During the course of COVID-19 progression, Deepak Group mobilized a slew of initiatives for both external and internal stakeholders. Setting an example, it made a conscious decision to not lay-off any employee and continue with salary hikes for its employees.

Besides covering all its employees with ‘Covid Kavach’, an all-inclusive, holistic insurance coverage, Deepak Group will address the hospital bills that exceed COVID insurance coverage as required. In the unfortunate event of any employee’s death from Covid-19, it has introduced financial support and assistance to the family of the deceased.

Deepak Group has taken up the responsibility of vaccinating all its employees and their families, both at its corporate office and across various plant sites. From a prevention perspective, it has introduced systematic testing, individual medical consultation, compulsory work-from-home, COVID-19 leave, standardized sanitization, disinfecting sites, site mapping to COVID-19 compliant protocols for social distancing, creation of ‘Covid-free bubbles’ for employees deemed critical for plant operations, issuances of N95 masks among others.

Leads by example 

Amid the unprecedented pandemic, the CSR arm of Deepak Group, Deepak Foundation has set-up 50 bed Covid Care Centers, as a part of its Covid care relief initiatives. Its employees are continuously engaged in community care by distributing nutrition and medicines to communities in various locations across India.

Foundation has established help desks in two district-level hospitals in Vadodara with support from Deepak Nitrite. These aim at improving accountability, transparency and communication with the poorest communities seeking treatment in government facilities. More than 12,500 patients needing emergency care were provided services like blood and blood products, vaccines, medicines, transport facilities. With the onset of the first COVID wave in the FY 2020-21, nearly 20,000 COVID-19 cases were guided and counseled for treatment. It also served as a designated 24x7 COVID Control Room for recording morbidities and mortality.

Four Mobile Health Units (MHUs), supported by Deepak Nitrite provide primary health services in villages around Dahej, Dugdha in Gujarat and Taloja and Roha in Maharashtra catering to around 66,700 beneficiaries annually in 133 villages.

Speaking to Indian Chemical News, Archana Joshi, Director, Deepak Foundation said, “The CSR projects supported by Deepak Nitrite Limited are designed based on systematically conducted evidence based research and are focused on SMART goals. Besides, irrespective of CSR support, the company is always forthcoming in providing humanitarian support at the time of disaster and crisis at the ground level.”

While spearheading various initiatives, the Deepak Foundation has also put in place the right mechanism to ensure checks and balances so that the aid reaches the right beneficiaries. It has adopted an hourglass method of addressing the causes that the conglomerate is committed to.

A top executive added, “While we establish the priorities, allocations, geographical extent, projected number of beneficiaries and liaising or partnering with key stakeholders, we also embrace a bottom-up approach by engaging with grassroots stakeholders, who have a last mile connectivity with the beneficiaries.”

Landmark initiatives

Deepak Group has been allocating over 2% of its revenue towards social and environmental issues on a yearly basis. Both, Deepak Nitrite and Deepak Phenolics, support various entrepreneurial activities for women in rural areas to improve their livelihood opportunities.

Deepak Phenolics supports a unique community-based intervention aimed at increasing convergence of eligible households under the government's social safety net programs The project aims facilitating pre-requisite documents of 100% eligible beneficiaries in the intervention villages and linkage of at least 80% of the eligible households with selected govt. schemes and safety net programs in 24 villages across Bharuch in Gujarat (17 villages), Morbi in Gujarat (4 villages), and Yamunanagar in Haryana (3 villages).

Deepak Nitrite, in partnership with the Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Gujarat, provides supportive supervision of 67 Anganwadi centres (AWCs) under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, in villages surrounding the Nandesari GIDC area.  Around 5,600 beneficiaries including children (0-6 years), adolescent girls and pregnant women and nursing mothers benefit from various value-added programs.

The Newborn Stabilization Units, functional via a unique Public Private Partnership are aimed at providing Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care from a sub-district level health facility to a catchment area comprising 10,00,000 tribal populations in Bodeli taluka of Chhota Udepur district of Gujarat.

The company has also supported the district administration of Bharuch in strengthening the two of its Health & Wellness Centres, located in Ambetha and Bhensali, Vagra taluka, Dahej, Bharuch, includes OPD services, non-communicable disease program, Anemia Control Program, counselling on family planning, screening for communicable diseases -TB, Malaria. The services reached out to 11,500 population living in 2,565 households across nine villages.

The Deepak Pathology Laboratory & Diagnostic Center (DPLDC) in Bharuch, Gujarat, is a comprehensive medical laboratory and diagnostic centre that aims at providing affordable, accessible and reliable diagnostic services to the general population and employees of various industries to ensure their safety, well-being and early diagnosis of any disease.

Deepak Group has supported de-addiction programs in urban slums, Hyderabad surrounding its plant in Jeedimetla area. The free-of-cost de-addiction Centre identified and reached out to over 3,000 alcohol addicts. Efforts for de-addiction of tobacco has been initiated in catchment rural areas of the company's plant in Vadodara, Gujarat. Over 1,100 tobacco addicts have been identified and 551 tobacco addicts have been enrolled for cessation program that includes one-one counselling, family counselling, psychiatric treatment and follow-up support. 

“Our contribution and support during Covid-19, financially as well as in non-financial metrics is significant. However, we are not focused on accounting the extent of our inputs, but rather are eager to measure the impact of the output,” remarked a member of top management.