Hey, you could follow Prof. Amitabha Bandyopadhy on Twitter. He posts regular updates.

Shreedhar Manek

Hey Sandeep, the story's free. Please share widely.

Shreedhar Manek

So DRDO seems to be working with Skanray to manufacture ventilators. I do not know any details of this design or what roles either of the parties are taking in the manufacturing. Skanray has been opaque with their plans and have shared little apart from ambitious targets. People that I spoke to were skeptical of Skanray pulling off making ICU-grade ventilators within the timeframe that they would be needed. That is the reason the barebones ventilators are being seen as having value. However, how DRDO's involvement changes things, we do not know yet.

Shreedhar Manek

That's interesting. No one we spoke to mentioned anything of this sort. If you have any expertise in this, do connect with any of those mentioned in the story to relay your suggestion.

Shreedhar Manek

Possibly. While Trivitron is a large manufacturer of medical devices, only a trader of ventilators. Will be sure to be more precise going ahead, thanks for pointing it out.

Shreedhar Manek

Hi. According to the senior executive that we spoke to, as mentioned in the story, Trivitron has had plans to manufacture ventilators for some time, and it is going ahead with it because of the current situation.

Shreedhar Manek

Thank you, Professor. It usually takes 6 - 9 months to get approvals. For individuals and companies building from the ground-up, they consider it to be a war-situation where regular rules don't apply. The government through entities such as AMTZ seems to be supportive of that, even though I am not aware of changes in formal approval processes.

Shreedhar Manek

Hey Ankur, from the people that we spoke to, the government has been dealing with this with a war-footing. AMTZ, mentioned in the story, is essentially making it zero-cost for companies to produce ventilators. Having said that, the biggest concern for everyone was the friction due to lockdown. Procuring products not just from abroad but even the country has become a difficult task. So, as of now, coordination between the various government entities is a problem.

Shreedhar Manek

It's just familiarity. A company will base its decisions on what its employees are used to - unless there's a strong decision to choose otherwise - and go with it. One of the people I spoke to went so far as to call it the "herd effect". Everyone's using it so there must be something about it. So we'll use it too.

Shreedhar Manek

That would also need them to incorporate in the country so that they can make their sales directly. But GitHub's strategy is multi-fold. They're not doing away with the focus on open source, in fact, encouraging it works out for them in the long-term. Also, let's not forget that the engineers that it hires here will help it catch up to competition (GitLab, primarily) in terms of the product features it offers.

Shreedhar Manek

It's difficult to know that for sure without being privy to internal data. Going by data from SimilarWeb, however, their traffic does not come from paid sources but is driven by organic search.

Shreedhar Manek

CPCs and CTRs, respectively.

Shreedhar Manek