Usually a startup means one big idea, multi-million dollars and huge profit making platform. But this story is completely different from what you have heard till now about startups.
So, here is the story of Simply Blood – World’s First Virtual Blood Donation Platform. As I said, we never thought or had the idea of creating Simply Blood, but it all started in year 1992.
On the 12th of May, 1992 the saddest day of my life till date occurred when I lost my mother to cancer. I almost lost my world on that day along with my mother.
I decided that from that day onwards, I will do anything and everything required to save lives. That was the cost I paid for losing my mother. I was desperately thinking of something to do for mankind, but had no idea.
In 2003, I met Dr. Shashi from Red Cross India. She inspired me to donate blood. The first time that I donated blood was at Pusa Polytechnic for one of my teachers, Mr. Saxena.
After that, I started donating blood and Dr. Shashi encouraged me to organise blood donation camps at educational institutes.
But a job and 9 to 5 routine life came in the way and I had to give up organising blood donation camps, but kept donating blood as volunteer blood donor.
Regular donor
I used to donate blood four times in a year on specific dates to make sure that I get my turn. I used to go to government hospitals and find poor people who didn’t know anyone in Delhi and needed blood.
The idea worked out well and many people across Delhi started recognising me at Blood Banks. I started networking with people to get contact details of volunteer blood donors.
That was part of the PR exercise for the Startup that I carried out for 9 years. In 2014, I started a group of blood donors on WhatsApp. We built a network of donors all across Delhi and used to help 1-2 persons a week.
In August 2016, one of our group members’ mother was hospitalized in Rohini and needed blood due to dengue. She was in Rewari (a small town near Delhi) and he assumed that he would reach the hospital in time to donate his own platelets to his mother.
Unfortunately, he didn’t inform the group members who were very close to the hospital that day. Sadly, he failed to reach in time.
I was shocked and could feel the pain of a person who paid such a huge cost for his mistake. I also got a valuable lesson on the value of time for donating blood.
That day, I started my Facebook page with the name ‘Simply Blood’ and purchased the domain.
The App
I was working with an education group and was unable to make time to do something for the platform. One day, I got a call from a random person regarding requirement for blood in Delhi (luckily that was my routine blood donation day).
I reached the blood bank, the person escorted me to the room and I left after donating blood. While returning, I thought to meet the patient and I went back. I couldn’t meet the patient, but I got to meet his wife.
I was utterly broken to learn that the lady had sold herself in her hometown to get her husband treated and she bought my blood for Rs. 1500. I felt like crying and decided to quit my job.
I started working on my blood donation app and on 29 January 2017, we launched the Simply Blood app. Thanks to TechCruzers who committed to providing us with technical support for next few years.
We have been developing the app to make Simply Blood the world’s smartest blood donation platform some day.
We started with the small target of providing blood to 100 people using our platform, which we successfully achieved in less than 6 weeks.
We are proud to share that Simply Blood has been downloaded in more than 40 countries, with more than 1500+ registered users from more than 10 countries. We celebrate the 150+ successful blood donations that have occurred in 7 countries using our platform.
Our mission is to save 1 million potential lives using Simply Blood by 2020. Kindly help us and join the league by downloading the app.
If we consider us a start-up, then we’ve paid the highest price to built this start-up and in terms of ROI, our success is priceless!