How India’s COVID crisis is impacting Americans of South Asian descent

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Michele Buck’s Hershey is on a hot streak, female ambassadors in the U.K. achieve a milestone, and women founders reflect on the COVID crisis in India. Have a restful weekend!

– Eyes on India. Seeing the devastating spike in COVID-19 cases in India would be horrifying no matter what. But for those of us watching from the U.S., the tragedy feels particularly unfair—we have the sheer luck of the draw to be living in a country finally starting to throw off its pandemic shackles, just as another nation faces its most intense virus fight yet.

For those with close ties to India, that feeling is a gut-punch. Emma spoke to a number of Indian-American female founders (and other businesswomen of South Asian descent) about their experiences of following the unfolding crisis from half a world away.

Prerna Gupta, founder and CEO mobile media app Hooked, is worried about not just her New Delhi- and Mumbai-based extended family, but her company’s India-based employees. “On the one hand, [here in the U.S.] you feel like, ‘wow it’s over,’ and free,” she says. “Then the next day, you hear all this crazy stuff happening in India.” She noted that the lockdowns have a particularly stark effect in the country because of infrastructure issues: “Being able to go into the office is much, much more important to have access to high-speed internet and reliable electricity.”

ClassPass founder Payal Kadakia tells Emma that her extended family in and around Mumbai is “just scared.” GAP CEO Sonai Syngal didn’t comment directly, but the company said it’s working to support its almost-1,000 India-based employees with medical insurance, sick leave, and an eventual vaccine task force.

Seema Bansal, founder of the florist business Venus Et Fleur, called on all of us to pay attention to the Indian crisis, not tune it out as our own daily focus on the virus becomes less intense. “As Indian-Americans, we are doing all that we can to use our voice and resources to support, educate, donate and raise awareness of the worsening COVID crisis in India.”

After all, this pandemic is not yet over—and until it is, no nation is safe. “It feels like a replay of what happened when we first started hearing about China—people thinking, ‘Oh, it’s so far away, and it’s never going to get here,'” says Gupta. “I hope we learned something from that. We are all connected.”

Kristen Bellstrom
kristen.bellstrom@fortune.com
@kayelbee

The Broadsheet, Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Claire Zillman.

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