IIT Roorkee Based Start-up Develops 150 Litre Herbal Hand Sanitizer To Tackle Covid-19

In an endeavour to minimize the transmission risk of COVID-19 and promote basic hygiene, two students of IIT Roorkee have led a development of preparing more than 150 litres (~ 1500 bottles) of the herbal hand sanitizer. The hand sanitizer will be distributed free of cost by Heal-agnostics Innovations, a start-up incubated at TIDES, IIT Roorkee under the aegis of Dr Indranil Lahiri and Dr Debrupa Lahiri, with support of the administration.

An initiative of Siddharth Sharma, a research scholar of Centre of Nanotechnology, IIT Roorkee (also a co-founder of Heal-agnostic Innovations) and Vaibhav Jain, research scholar of the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, it is made of 80 per cent isopropanol/ ethanol and comprises of antibacterial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory herbal ingredients; it also works as an excellent moisturizer.

The product has been developed in line with recommendations of the World Health Organization and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It will be distributed free of cost at the IIT Roorkee campus.

“In view of the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative to maintain basic hygiene practices since there is no specific treatment or vaccine for the disease. This IIT Roorkee-incubated product will be useful to the entire community by promoting basic hygiene,” said Siddharth Sharma, a research scholar of Centre of Nanotechnology, IIT Roorkee.

“This huge task would not have been possible without the hard work of some students. Satish Jaiswal, Kanike Rajesh, Dibyanshu Lahiri, Anshu Dubey, Souvik Ghosh, Nitam Kumar, Vishal Panwar have worked day and night for three days continuously to make our effort successful,” mentioned Dr Debrupa Lahiri, IIT Roorkee.

The sanitizer bottles are being handed over to the office of Dean SRIC, which is working as a nodal centre for distribution among the campus community. IIT Roorkee is also planning to put up a refilling station at a suitable location in the campus. Heal-agnostic Innovations is working to support this plan.