Surely a country with more than a billion people would never face a blood donation shortage but it does. Often in emergency situations like accidents or for people who suffer from conditions like thalassemia, haemophilia, sickle-cell anaemia, etc. India faces a whopping blood deficit of approximately 30-35 per cent annually. The country needs around eight to ten million units of blood every year but manages a measly 5.5 million units. But the problem isn’t lack of healthy willing donors but getting in touch with them at the right time and Socialblood founder Karthik Naralasetty figured out exactly how to do that – Facebook!
23-year-old Karthik Naralasetty created Socialblood in 2011 after he noticed the deficiencies in the current system of blood donation after he witnessed a family’s struggle to find regular transfusion for their four-year-old daughter who was suffering from thalassemia. We caught up with him on the occasion of World Blood Donor’s Day to talk more about his initiative. Excerpts from the interview:
Q: How was Socialblood born? What made you use Facebook as a tool for blood donation?
Karthik: In June 2011, I happened to read a news story about a young girl from rural Karnataka who was suffering from thalassemia (A blood disease). I looked at current platforms people use to find blood donors and none of them really appealed to me. 80% of India’s internet population is on Facebook every other day. I asked myself – If my social networking site can notify me about my friend Raj’s birthday why can’t it tell me that my friend Raj met with an accident and needs 3 units of blood. I am heavy Facebook user and it made perfect sense for me to use my network of friends to solve this problem. Well, I created 8 Facebook groups for 8 blood types and invited my friends to join in. Not only they joined in but they actually shared requests for blood and it spread like a wildfire and I won Ashoka Staples Youth Entrepreneur Award the same year and travelled to the US to present the idea in front of amazing people like Sean Parker, Marissa Meyer etc.
Q: How exactly does Socialblood work?
SocialBlood plugs into the Facebook for the obvious reasons of having everyone in one place. On syncing with the service, the user adds information like the city they are available in, geo-fence for notificiation of blood donation requests (basically how far are you willing to travel to donate like 5 km, 10 km or the entire city), blood type and if they can donate blood. Then it pulls up list of connections that are already using the service. The interface is fairly simple to use, the filters on the top bar help to narrow down on blood request and donors available for a particular blood type. The map pulls up that information with markings on the location and a legend is available for the assistance of first time users.
The beauty of a social platform like this is the fact that, it helps democratize and populate the system with the known network. We can scan the network for blood relations (known people with the same blood type as ours) and invite members which can be extremely useful during the time of distress.
The user can also make a blood request using a quick form asking critical questions. The user adds information like what component (red blood cells, plasma or whole blood) along with type is required and adding other details like the number of units required, the date of requirement and hospital name.
Q: What exactly does coin/reward system in the app do?
Coins are the way we reward donors, for every action you perform on the platform the system rewards you with Socialblood coins and you can use these coins to buy products offered by our partners. For example, you can buy a coffee at Starbucks for 50 Socialblood coins.
Q: Recently we’ve come across a bunch of different technological innovations which are providing new solutions to age-old healthcare solutions? What role can technology play in solving India’s healthcare woes?
I predict the next decade will be defined by disruptions that happen in the healthcare sector. We at Socialblood believe anything that is social will outrun the traditional model and will yield better results in the long run. Entrepreneurs should start building products around people rather than focusing completely on the need, the product you are building might solve a problem but if you don’t build your product around people no one will use it and thus the problem still exists.
Q: In some ways you represent a new breed of Indians. A person who’s no longer waiting for the government or society to fix its problems but someone who’s trying to fix those issues themselves. What do you have to say to any budding social entrepreneurs out there?
I believe we can do more for each other than the government can do for us and that’s what drives us at Socialblood. I think entrepreneurs before us were very unlucky because without the technology that we take for granted, it took them a lot time, money and other resources to build things that could solve problems. With the piping of the internet and in our case with the help of platforms like Facebook companies like ours come out of nowhere very, very quickly to solve real problems.
Stop thinking that only if I get funded will I be successful; your focus should be on making money rather than raising money. Look around and start asking people for help and don’t wait for anyone. Build something even if that is worst thing you’ve ever built and always iterate.
Q: Socialblood has been getting a lot of attention from bigwigs and according to a report received funding from Rajan Anandan (MD, Google India), Karthik Reddy (Blume Ventures), and Ramesh Kumar Shah and Ravi Gururaj of Harvard Business School Alumni Angels. What are your plans for Socialblood? Is there any desire to expand?
We are fortunate to have found investors and mentors like Rajan, Ravi, Karthik and Ramesh and I sincerely thank them for believing in our mission of solving the world’s blood crisis. Socialblood’s sole purpose of existence is to make our world a more compassionate place. We dream of building a universal platform that can foster human relations and save millions of lives in the process. We are expanding in few focused countries by the end of this year and will establish a full functional team in India going forward.
So don’t forget to check out Socialblood and become part of the change.