BloodPlus – Integrating blood donors and banks through technology

Did you know that a pint of blood can save upto 3 lives? And that our nation faces a huge shortage in the availability of blood and donors. According to a WHO report in 2012, India needs about 14 million units of blood every year and out of this requirements only about 8 million units is met. Blood cannot be manufactured. It can only be donated by generous donors like YOU. A lot of times, in times of need, even strangers become near ones as they come forward to offer their help to donate blood.

BloodPlus aims at creating a common online platform to find donors whenever required, at one go. The startup aims to create a database so large that blood banks never fall short of donors and never have to reach a situation where patient’s relatives are forced for replacements.

Shashikant Chandak is a CBIT student while his co-founder friend, Kshitij Kumar is a Jodhpur IITian. When one of Sashikant’s senior experienced himself running from one bloodbank to another, and one hospital to another in search of the most common blood group B+, the founder realized the huge gap existing in the market. Upon further research, he learnt the fact that many websites just show up donor’s data without their consent (like phone no., email id and address) which is not recommended legally. In most of the cases, the data is obsolete.

“Everybody wants to donate blood, if eligible. What we found out here is that, there is no communication between blood banks and donors. Also, blood banks are restricted to their own database which is not more than 2000 and this is where we fit in”. Says the proud founder. That was the ‘Eureka’ moment for him. When he discussed this idea co-founder Kshitij, he was all game to begin the startup and shared his inputs and data as well.

The duo team then got in direct touch with numerous blood banks in the city and briefed them about the idea of BloodPlus. “With BloodPlus, we aim to overcome that problem and provide blood banks access to huge database and technology that allows them to communicate with eligible donors directly in case of emergency”, says Kshitij.

Why BloodPlus?

• BloodPlus does not require you to download any app. Just register and you will get SMS alerts for donation
• Any registered donor will get a maximum of only two requests per day
• The user’s data is kept with utmost confidentiality

How does the service work?

The path to donating blood through BloodPlus is just a simple three step process –

• Donors just need to register once on BloodPlus’s website
• Once they register, they get a text message to which they just have to respond YES if they are interested to donate. On donating blood, the donors don’t receive any message for next 3 months
• They can update their details anytime online to receive more relevant donation requests (i.e. change in location, change status to inactive etc)

Donors can also sync in with Facebook. This will allow them to reach out to their friends for help in case of an emergency.

Currently, BloodPlus has 1300+ donors registered with them and they are in talks with the Government of Telangana for partnerships. The operations of BloodPlus are spread across the city of Hyderabad and with further funding and investments the duo is looking at integrating blood banks and hospitals all over the nation.

What are you waiting for? Go on, register yourself on BloodPlus’s website and contribute your little for those who are in dire need. If you wish to contact them through social media, here are the details:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bloodplusindia

Instagram: www.instagram.com/bloodplusindia

Twitter: www.twitter.com/bloodplusindia

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