These services have only been authorised to allow people to view what slots are available even as the government plans to release an open-source version of CoWIN for other countries. There is a small but growing list of private companies that are taking advantage of newly introduced norms that let third parties use the government's CoWIN platform to book vaccination slots on third-party apps or websites. The rush started on May 28, when the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare put out guidelines that set out the norms for booking vaccines. While multiple services are taking advantage of open APIs that merely fetch information on vaccine slot availability, only a few have registered to directly offer vaccine registrations. These companies are: Paytm (June 15): A couple of weeks after the government put out its guidelines on data use, Paytm announced that its in-app vaccine slot finder was being updated to allow users to directly book slots. This presumably means that the company has registered as an Application Service Provider. This made Paytm the first company to provide the service. HealthifyMe (July 6): On Tuesday, fitness and health app HealthifyMe announced that it had "acqui-hired" Under45, a volunteer-led effort to provide notifications of vaccine appointments. However, in addition to the notifications, HealthifyMe said it had obtained an ASP registration from the government, permitting it to directly offer slot bookings from inside the app. Vodafone Idea (July 8): On Thursday, Vodafone Idea said it would provide slot bookings through the Vi app. However, this process…
