ALS Ice Bucket Challenge enters Bollywood

The person who accepts the challenge then nominates his friends. The challenge entered Bollywood when Tennis player Sania Mirza nominated her actor friend Riteish Deshmukh, to take the Ice Bucket Challenge.

https://t.co/A9LVuVZGFv Take 2. @Maheshbhupathi @Riteishd @anammirza @YUVSTRONG12

— Sania Mirza (@MirzaSania) August 18, 2014

Father-to-be Riteish sportingly accepted the challenge in Krakow, Poland, where he is shooting for his upcoming film ‘Bangistan’. He posted his video on Facebook nominating his actor friends Abhishek Bachchan, Sidharth Malhotra, Ashish Chowdhry, Pulkit Sharma and Akshay Kumar.

Riteish posted, “I accepted Sania Mirza’s ALS Ice Bucket Challenge,to spread the awareness for ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). I further nominate my friends Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan, Siddharth Malhotra, Pulkit Samrat and Ashish Chowdhry. Gotta do it within 24hrs -time starts now.”

‘Raaz’ actress Bipasha Basu was also nominated by her friend Suzie. She accepted the challenge and further nominated designer friend Rocky S and Shilpa Shetty’s industrialist husband Raj Kundra.

Soon to be seen in ‘Happy New Year’, actor Abhishek Bachchan accepted Riteish Deshmukh’s challenge and took the Ice Bucket Challenge.

OK!! #ALSIceBucketChallenge @SrBachchan @iamsrk @Riteishd http://t.co/3gByhHHtfs

— Abhishek Bachchan (@juniorbachchan) August 20, 2014

Abhishek further nominated his dad Amitabh Bachchan and superstar Shah Rukh Khan. ‘Dhamaal’ actor Ashish Chowdhary also accepted Riteish’s challenge.

Yes,I did nominate #Twamily 4 some didn’t watch thoroughly!!Lol.. So 1 of u start,nominate at least 2/3 from #Twamily http://t.co/5Tad9AWugJ — Ashish Chowdhry (@AshishChowdhry) August 20, 2014

He further nominated five people including Anusha Dandekar, Mandira Bedi, Dia Mirza, Neha Dhupia and Sophie Chowdhary.

The basic idea of the Ice Bucket Challenge is to raise money for charity. Facebook founder Mark Zukerberg nominated Bill Gates for the challenge and he accepted it.

According to a press release by ALS Foundation, it has received $22.9 million in donations compared to $1.9 million during the same time period last year (July 29 to August 19). These donations have come from existing donors and 453,210 new donors to The Association.