Why are you so passionate about giving blood to others?

To understand this, you will have to understand where Kiran Verma comes from. I was born to a lower middle-class family, with all the problems that typically exist in such an environment. When I was barely seven years old, I lost my mother to cancer. Given that I was closest to my mother, her demise left me feeling abandoned. As I grew older, this feeling that I did not matter in my family began to take root. I remember, when I scored decent marks in my class X board exams, there was no excitement, no celebration at all. It left a deep impact on me.

Unlike anyone else in my family, I had a burning need for some sort of validation and recognition. I wanted to matter. But the family circumstances did nothing to make me feel any better. In 2002, with INR 400 in my pocket, I started out by selling posters. I also reached out to Mr. Abhishek G Bhaya of TOI and he very kindly gave me an opportunity to write an article. For a while I earned a bit by freelancing for various newspapers. But I was still driven by a deep yearning for validation of some sort.

I enrolled in a Diploma Course in Printing Technology. Here too, at best, I was an average student with backlog in 5 subjects. It was sometime during this course that one of my professors missed his classes for a few days. On enquiring, I learned that he, being a kidney patient, needed blood transfusion, but was unable to organise any donor. Thinking I would earn some brownie points and possibly impress the professor, I landed up at the hospital and gave blood for him. I did not go with any deep sense of service. I was merely hoping to earn his goodwill. But as I was coming out of the hospital, the professor’s son came up to me and thanked me profusely. I cannot explain the feeling, but it was the first time in my life that I felt any kind of validation for who I was or what I had done. It felt like I mattered. This is a moment I cherish till date.

This is where my story began and I have never looked back since that day.

So, you became a regular blood donor after this incident?

Yes. I discovered that a person could donate blood once in 3 months. So I fixed four dates on which I would donate blood. 24th March, 23rd June, 25th September and 27th December. The first two are birth dates of two close friends. The third is my sister’s birth date, while the last one is my own birth date. So there was a relevance and a meaning attached to these moments as well. I would go and hang outside hospitals and observe people. It wasn’t too difficult to spot someone in genuine need of blood. I would identify them and help them by donating blood to them. Every time I gave blood, I felt a kick, a high, sense of validation and this feeling motivated me to continue in my path.

What happened in 2016 that changed your life again?

At that time I was working in marketing and earning a six-figure salary. It was December of 2016 and demonetisation was in force. You will remember how difficult it was for anyone to organise cash. On 26th December, I got a call from an unknown number. The person said that a poor family from Raipur, Chhattisgarh urgently needed blood in Delhi and if I could refer someone. This was not unusual for me since I was, by now, attached to several WhatsApp groups connected to blood donation drives. Rather than refer someone, I decided to go myself since my own donation date fell on the next day. I went to Safdarjung Hospital as requested and donated my blood. Normally one has to rest for a while after giving blood. I decided to use the time to go and meet the patient. I went up to the ward, where I was told that the patient and his wife had gone down. So I started chatting with this Bengali lady who was occupying the adjoining bed. In course of our conversation, I came to know that the family I had helped was in such dire straits that the wife had to turn to prostitution to pay for her husband’s medical bills.

In the meantime, the couple returned. When I introduced myself to them, the lady asked me what I wanted, since they had already paid for my services. When I told them I had donated my blood for free, they said that the man who had contacted me had actually sold my blood to them about INR 2000. I was stunned. I couldn’t fathom what she would have had to go through to get the money she paid for my blood. I slipped whatever little money I had on me under the pillow and left quietly. I was so shaken to the core that on the way back to Greater Noida, I stopped my car by the highway, called my wife and cried. My wife heard me out and simply told me: Either you do something about this or let it go. Crying will achieve nothing.

It was a turning point in my life. I was so impacted by the enormity of what I had just encountered. Corruption was rampant in the field I was working in. I kept thinking of what all a person may have had to go through to organise the money needed to grease palms in my field. I felt sick at the thought. In the heat of that moment, I called my boss and resigned over the phone. With the money that I got from my full and final settlement, I hired a team from Ambala on 3rd January 2017. And in less than a month, on 29th January, we launched Simply Blood as an app and platform.

What was it like to run the world’s first Virtual Blood Donation Platform?

Simply Blood connects potential donors in the recipient’s location to the recipient, thus effectively cutting out any middle man or third party. But there is another incident that truly shaped my perspective on Simply Blood.

It was April 2017, when we got a request for blood from Swat in Pakistan. At first I couldn’t understand why a request was coming from there. But it seems a recent article on us by The Logical Indian got widely shared and someone in Swat read it and thought that we were present in Pakistan as well. So they raised a request on Simply Blood. I connected with them on WhatsApp, and it turned out that a terrorist group had shot someone and they needed blood to save him. They had raised a request on Simply Blood by mistake.

I decided that even if it was by mistake, it was worth a try. I reached out to my Facebook contacts from Pakistan and believe it or not, in less than three hours, four donors landed up to help them out in Swat. This was yet another turning point for me. It felt like I had achieved something. I felt this was something that could be done.

That’s when I decided to develop Simply Blood as a virtual blood donation platform. If an Uber in India could work as Uber Careem in Pakistan, why couldn’t we help people anywhere in the world while sitting in India?

My personal funds were running out. I posted my anguish on LinkedIn. Countless people wrote to me suggesting I use crowdfunding to generate funds. I did and successfully so. The encouragement and love that I got from LinkedIn made me realise that there are many people out there who would support me as long as the intent was good.

You undertook your first walk for blood in 2018. What prompted this?

A request for blood was raised on the platform by the father of an eleven-year-old boy called Mayank. They were from Rampur, UP and were in Delhi, seeking treatment for Mayank. I went across and gave blood. I found Mayank to be a young boy full of aspirations. We connected well and I kept in touch over the next few months. Then there was brief period of a few weeks when I could not speak with them.

One day I got a call from the father. He asked for Mayank’s photographs which I had taken when I met them. When I enquired as to why, he told me that those were the last pictures anyone had taken of Mayank. He had died in the biggest hospital in the capital city of India with blood gushing from his eyes and mouth because his platelet count had plunged, and no one was available to give him platelets.

This was not a dignified death. I felt ashamed of the fact that we could not save Mayank. If not save, we could have at least given him hope, or maybe a few more days of life? I was expecting my first child around the same time. I kept thinking, what kind of a world was I going to welcome him into? I had to do something.

I had read about people like Ashish Sharma and Srishti Bakshi, who had undertaken walks to raise awareness on child begging and women empowerment. I decided this would be a good way to motivate people to donate blood. It would not cost much, and I would be able to directly connect with people and motivate them to give blood. I spoke to my wife and she supported me. So on 23rd January, 2018, less than two weeks after my son was born, I set out from Jammu & Kashmir and spent the next 7 months walking. I covered every state and UT except Lakshadweep. I met thousands of students and people from all walks of life. I went to colleges and universities. Thousands wrote to me saying they had given blood for the first time after meeting me. I felt like I had achieved something. I felt this was possible.

When I came back, I had the opportunity to attend a Social Incubation Program conducted by the Nudge Foundation. With the learning I acquired here, I went about putting systems and processes in place, took care of compliance and was able to significantly improve and scale up Simply Blood. I feel proud to say that I got every certification without paying a rupee as bribe. And I did it all by myself.

Tell us a bit about Change With One Meal. How did this come about?

It was sometime during the lockdown that I was contacted by a childhood friend from Maujpur in Delhi. I come from a very lower middle-class origin. Which is why many of my childhood friends are from simple backgrounds. I never lost touch with them. So this friend asked me of I could lend him a hundred rupees as there was no ration in his house since 2 days. I was sceptical and sent another friend to check on him. It turned out that he had lost his job when the factory he worked in was destroyed in the Delhi riots. With the lockdown on, he didn’t even have enough money to have a proper meal. I helped him with whatever I could, but I couldn’t stop thinking that there were so many people like him who did not even have the luxury of one proper dignified meal a day.

That’s when I started Change With One Meal. We set up in a place in Maujpur and started serving healthy meals to people for ten rupees, in a dignified setting. Initially I had thought that this would run for 3-4 months. It was self-funded. But as the numbers rose, we turned to crowdfunding and managed to raise some funds.

With the support of some kind-hearted people, we now employ staff to run the outlet. Everything is process driven. Most of the people who come to us are unskilled labourers from the neighbouring areas. We now serve meals to almost a thousand people every day and in the last fifteen months, we have served close to 4 lakh meals. We will do this for as long as we can. For me it’s simple. No one should be denied a decent, healthy meal in a city like Delhi in today’s day and age.

Coming back to Simply Blood: you have made it your personal mission to ensure nobody will die waiting for blood after 31st December 2025. Is this achievable or are you simply being brave?

Do you know, India’s annual requirement for blood is 15 million units? Of this, 11 million units are annually organised, out of which about 1 million units are wasted. So to solve India’s blood shortage, all we need are 5 million units in a year. That means if 5 million people donate blood once a year, we can solve India’s annual blood shortfall. It means taking out 15 minutes once a year. That’s all it will take. Big social media platforms have over 500 million subscribers in India. I am only looking for 1% of them.

The only problem that we have effectively ended in India is that of Polio. Compared to that, blood is a much smaller problem. I don’t have ambitions of making a big NGO and so on and so forth. For me this is a solvable problem. So, I have decided a retirement age for this mission. By end of December 2025, we will motivate enough people to donate blood once a year and solve this shortfall forever.

We don’t have a culture of blood donation in India. I want to build this culture by meeting people and motivating them to give blood. People are inherently good. They just need to be motivated.

If we can do this, nobody will die waiting for blood after 31st December 2025 in India.

You are presently on a walk across India. How long will this last?

I started my walk from Kerala last week. My target is to cover all of India and I intend to touch 200 cities. If I manage to walk 20-30 km every day, it will take me close to two years before I can go back home to Delhi.

Where do you draw your strength from?

My wife, my friends, my supporters and my mentors. I have humble origins. Had it not been for them, who knows I would probably be living a wasted life on some street in Delhi. Whatever I am today, it is because I got the right guidance and support from the right people at the right time. I owe it all to them.

Visit Simply Blood to find a donor or help someone who needs blood. If you would like The LEF Journal to cover stories of inspiring people you know, do drop your suggestions in the comment box. 

This interview was originally conducted over a WhatsApp video call and has been edited for the purpose of this article.