India faces acute shortage of blood. Many lives get lost due to unavailability of blood. Since Blood cannot be manufactured, it is important to not only create awareness about the significance of blood donation but also to create a robust network of donors across the country. Some exemplary young bloods are doing the same.
1. BloodPlus has been started with the vision to have a common platform to find blood donors whenever and wherever required without much fuss. Youngsters Shasikant Chandak and Kshitij Kumar are the founders of the startup. The idea of the startup germinated from personal experience of the huge gap between blood requirement and availability. Also, websites either have obsolete data or data without consent of the donors. BloodPlus overcomes this problem and provides huge database access to blood banks with contactable and consent providing donors. One has to just register and there is an SMS alert whenever there is a requirement of blood donation. Confidentiality of data is guaranteed. Upon donating blood there is no SMS alert for the next three months. After registering one’ details, individuals can update the latest contact information and location change online. There is a facebook page through which blood requirements can be addressed. BloodPlus is a Hyderabad based startup with 1300+ donors.
2. Simply Blood was founded by youngster Kiran Verma from Delhi. Simply Blood allows an individual who requires blood to directly connect with blood donors, thus eliminating middlemen and frauds. It is the world’s first virtual blood donation platform which has so far saved 700 lives in 9 countries. Whenever someone posts a requirement of blood, the blood donors nearby get notified. Simply Blood manages requests not only virtually but manually too. Privacy of data with Simply Blood is guaranteed and connecting to a donor is easy.
3. BloodConnect has been started up by a group of young individuals from Delhi IIT led by Nitin Garg with the mission to contribute towards the shortage of blood in India. In the year 2010 BloodConnect started as a project under National Service Scheme (NSS) chapter. The group of youth worked with so much dedication on the project that BloodConnect is a full fledged NGO now. There is 24X7 helpline service. Awareness about the cause of blood donation is spread through competitions, info-talks, street plays etc. Weekly blood donation camps are organized by the organization. A network of youth across the nation has been established to lead the movement.
4. Khoon is an NGO that deals with blood donations and operates across India. It has handled thousands of blood helpline requests through its app. The app focuses on donor priority. The app named Khoon app uses data analysis to automatically notify all matched donors within a 10 km radius whenever there is an urgent requirement. Chethan M Gowda of Bangalore is the founder of Khoon. He was a 14 year old boy when his teacher died due to unavailability of blood. By the time he was 17 he had founded Khoon. His startup has collaborated with multiple hospitals and blood banks to help in the entire process of blood donation, beginning from donor blood testing to reporting the blood status. So far the organization has organised more than 35 blood donation camps connecting young people to the noble cause of blood donation. To attract youngsters, there are theme-based donation camps as well with themes like stand-up comedy, love, freedom, music etc. The startup has a network of 87,000 voluntary donors across India.