Reason behind Simply Blood
12th May, 1992, I lost my mother due to cancer, I was only 7 at that time. I was all alone as she was the only source of energy in my life. But she gave me few good lessons in her last few days like “Serve the Mankind”, “Love All”, “Be Kind to Others” and “Help the needy”. These were the seeds of this startup called “Simply Blood”.
I never got too many opportunities to implement these lessons until the age of 18, when I met with one of our teachers at polytechnic, who’s kidney was damaged and blood transfusion was required after every 10-15 days. That was the first time I donated blood and realized the importance of blood. I was very inspired and decided to donate blood as the lessons taught by my mom goes perfectly with this. But I had no idea what to do, then I met with someone at Indian Red Cross Society who encouraged me to organize blood donation camp at my polytechnic. That was the first work done by me beyond my personal capacity.
The Passion
I started donating blood and picked-up days which are of some significance. I’d make sure the days are 90 days apart. Like 24th March – My friend’s birthday, 23rd June – My best friend’s birthday, 25th September – My Sister’s Birthday and 27th Dec – My birthday. I used to visit a government hospital on these dates and would look around the blood bank to find a real needy. After finding the one, I used to donate blood straight to the needy. The satisfaction and happiness was all that was needed to keep going on. I started making a small community with around 10-20 blood donors who can potentially donate 40-50 times in a year. We started getting calls almost 1-2 times every week and that is how Simply Blood started working.
But the name was only in our minds and we never thought about branding this name ever in life. We were just a bunch of blood donors. But due to many factors, we lost contact with many blood donors as many switched from landlines to mobiles or changed their numbers. So we decided to create a small yahoo group with the name Delhi Blood Donors which had around 200-300 members. Later we switched to Orkut and also started a whatsapp group. By 2011 we had our twitter handle, Facebook page and whatsapp group. But that was not doing much, just 1-2 requests every week.
Reason to create a platform
In August 2016, one of our community members didn’t inform us about his mother, who was fighting with dengue. She urgently needed blood platelets. He decided to not disturb any of the members, as he thought he could reach her within 2 hours. However, after reaching the hospital, he saw that there was nothing left. His friend shared the whole incident and I decided to create a platform and bought the domain name the same day. I wanted to do something about this everyday, but my regular job wasn’t allowing me to do anything.
Reason to quit regular job
28th December 2016, I got a random call that somebody needs blood and I need to donate. After donating, I wanted to meet the patient, but could only meet his wife. I learnt that she had to sell herself for her husband’s treatment. The blood which was donated for free, she was charged Rs. 1500 for the same.I gave her the money, tried to get in touch with the authorities, but nobody even reacted to my complaint. I realized that it’s a huge lobby doing black marketing of blood in India. I resigned the same day and started working full-time of Simply Blood.
Achievements
I got to meet a team of software engineers who committed me to provide technical support to the cause for the next few months. We were ready with the app on 29th Jan 2017 (it was my elder brother’s birthday) and launched it. We got our first requirement on the same day which was fulfilled successfully. So far, we have collected 60000+ database of blood donors across India, we have got 4000+ registered users on our platform (includes website as well) and 3000+ registered users on our android app. We have got 1000+ requests so far (including fake requests) so far and successfully provided blood to more than 500+ needy people in 8 countries in 10 weeks. Our android app is among the highest rated blood donation apps on Google Play with a 4.9 rating from 180+ users. We feel proud while sharing these numbers, specially when this comes as blessings to us.
Financial issues and our request to support
Now we are working on developing the world’s most sophisticated life saving platform. This platform is going to save lives in remotest parts of the world. But sadly my savings are very low and now it’s impossible for me to invest my savings into it any further, for my survival. We have reached out to a few govt officials but nothing happened. As I am not doing a full-time job, my loan request has been rejected as well. I went to a few other sources but they needed a profit making business model to invest in. Now the only last option left for me is crowdfunding.
We request you to be a part of the mission and kindly support us by donating to the cause
Kindly visit this link to contribute to this cause.
You may also refer few media coverage to check our our done so far on below links:
The Logical Indian | Youth Ki Awaaz | GazabPost | Wittyfeed | Yourstory | Thynkfeed | Inventiva
