Startup links blood givers, takers

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Twenty-four-year-old Karthik Naralasetty's startup Socialblood, a platform that brings together blood donors and recipients, has received funding from Google India MD Rajan Anandan, Karthik Reddy of Blume Ventures, and Ravi Gururaj and Ramesh Shah of Harvard Business School Alumni Angels.


The venture won admiration from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at a marketing conference in San Francisco earlier this month. Naralasetty recounted to 1,500-odd Facebook employees how the suffering of a four-year-old Bangalore girl suffering from thalassemia, a genetic blood disorder, gave him the idea of connecting blood recipients with life-saving donors.

The girl's family had to frequently go from hospital to blood bank to obtain blood. Each time, they were told they would be sold blood only if they provided a donor to replenish the supply. Naralasetty came to know of the family's struggle through a TOI report. Socialblood was founded in June 2011 soon after that.

Facebook's strategic partnerships manager Libby Leffler, who looks into non-profit ventures, is said to be excited. Socialblood captures a donor's location and places it on a map.

The trust factor is high when you discover that someone in your friends circle requires blood. You'll get a notification and a call of action. If you tell people that someone in the country needs blood every three seconds, it doesn't necessarily motivate them to act. But people are motivated by stories of friends and family looking for blood.

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