Hyperlinked to life

He wanted to do something that would help save lives. He then stumbled upon the idea of launching a website that would facilitate blood donations. What followed was indianblooddonors.com. Rest, as earthquake hit Gujarat and terror struck Pune would tell you, is history. Khushroo Poacha’s online forum has registered people from across India as blood donors who can rush to their hospital on an SMS to give blood. It’s an anywhere, anytime virtual service which works on a very novel format. NIDHI MITTAL tells you how a Railway official and his wife, from Nagpur, manage donors all over India, and turn up as messiahs in anyone’s time of crisis?

The bomb blast in Pune ripped apart the trademark German Bakery and everyone geared up to do his bit in the hour of crisis. Someone far away in Nagpur, however, made a lot of difference. A phone call from a relative during a dinner outing informed him about the blast and the super activity that followed on his part helped save many a life all the way in Pune.
Khushroo Poacha rushed back home and called up a news channel while on his way, requesting them to put his mobile number on the running ticker so that people in Pune could register as blood donors by sending an SMS. Within 5 minutes the scroll was up and in the next 10, the SMS server crashed with hundreds of messages pouring in from people wanting to donate blood.
“I immediately contacted Dhirendra Jain who was on vacation. He connected to our server through the net and set right the problem and monitored the system till 3 am that night. I also woke up Deepak Arora, CEO of Saltriver Systems, who co-ordinated putting up the SMS server. I then spoke to technicians in blood banks at the Inlaks and Budhrani Hospital and the Jehangir Hospital in Pune to let us know when they would need blood so that we could co-ordinate the donations through our SMS network,” says Poacha who’s initiative helped saved many lives in Pune.
The use of mobile phone to instantly provide blood donors was a great idea which Poacha executed recently. However, it all started with a website.
It was, indeed, an unusual night for young Poacha. It was the first time he was spending so many hours inside a hospital. His grandmother had slipped into coma at the Government hospital in Nagpur and he was by her side throughout. Sleep was impossible in the uncomfortable room meant only for the patient. A drowsy Poacha sat on a bench in the corridor when, around 3 am, he heard a commotion.
He went towards the group of people shouting at someone. Poacha was shocked to see that some men were beating up a doctor while a few women were standing there, sobbing. They were relatives of a patient who had just passed away. “I pushed them away from the doctor and asked them why they were thrashing him. They said, the doctor had killed their patient. The doctor told me how the patient needed blood and how he had asked them to arrange for it which they couldn’t and that’s why the man died.”
Though things cooled down after that, I was left wondering. Since my grandmother also passed away some time later, this incident got stacked in my memory,” Poacha recalls. This was 1994.
In 1999, when Poacha got married and was buying furniture for his house, he visited a shop owner. However, despite three visits to the shop, he could not meet the owner to fix the deal. Irritated, he gave him a call to tell him about the urgency for the furniture. The shop-owner said he was too busy to come as he was trying to arrange blood for his neighbour. The patient needed ‘O negative’. Poacha had donated blood several times and had acquired a voluntary blood donor card which allows him to withdraw blood at the time of need. He immediately went into action but could not find ‘O negative’. Finally, only one unit could be found but it was too late — the patient had lost his life. The incident took Poacha back to 1994 and he felt he needed to do something better for people needing blood.
Thirtytwo-year-old Poacha was also going through a crisis at that time. His wife had just had a miscarriage and the chances of her conceiving again were bleak, according to doctors. Poacha thought, what better way to come out of grief than help others in their desperate times. The thought worked well. He told his wife he would do something to help people all over in India and with her eagerness to join him in his novel campaign, the couple launched a drive to figure out how.
It was during a conversation with friends in a cyber cafe that the Poachas stumbled on the idea of doing something through the Internet. “I did not know head or tail of Internet business, but I had an intuition that it would make a difference. Over the next few months, time went by learning more about the medium. I liquidated all my savings to purchase a domain name,” says Poacha. The rest, as doctors in Pune would confirm, was one big helping hand — anywhere, anytime.
It’s been 10 years that indianblooddonors.com came into being and it has been helping save many lives. However, when relatives heard that Poacha had spent Rs 1 lakh on this uncertain initiative, they went ballistic. “Why will unknown people come to help unknown people,” they wanted to know? But nothing deterred Poacha who works with the Indian Railways. His wife is as an administrative officer of a private school. The couple’s income, at that time, was barely enough for making ends meet. “There were many occasions when unpaid phone bills would be lying in the house and there would be no money to clear them,” Poacha recalls, adding that “things always have a way of sorting themselves out. And mysteriously during such times, a cheque would make its way into the mailbox.” An organisation from San Jose in the US sponsored their phone bills while a Supreme Court lawyer silently left a cheque of Rs 1,001 with a note saying, “good job done”.
So how has he managed to sustain this unique website for so long? “Internet hosting used to happen from abroad at that time. So, initially I accepted a few donations coming from various circles and when the media started reporting about us, we became a little popular and started getting many hits on our website. It was only later that website hostings were made free. I had to shell out Rs 2,000 per month for the site,” he tells you, saying that he has faced several questions about money and has given only one answer to everyone doubting his intention. “How did Mother Teresa do it all over the world? My effort is relatively smaller and easier. I don’t accept monetary donations now. People are welcome to contribute in kind by way of stamps, paper etc to make the website as popular as possible,” says Poacha. He is now a popular figure globally and has been invited to various debates, including one in South Korea.
Visibility, however, was an issue initially. No publication was willing to write about him. No major hospital or blood bank was interested in taking his calls. And then the 2001 Gujarat earthquake happened. As visuals of the devastation flashed before his eyes on TV, Poacha realised yet again that he had to do something. Only, this time he knew just what. “I called up Zee News and requested them to flash the site’s name on the ticker and they agreed. Over the next three days I received 3,500-odd registrations by potential donors,” Poacha recalls.
Corporate houses have been wanting to join Poacha’s effort but he has so far kept them at bay in what he fears would turn into crass commercialisation of a noble cause.
It was Catch-22 for Poacha, however, when his boss’ son expressed the desire to buy his website for Rs 3 lakh. He even offered Poacha a partnership and a stake of 25 per cent in the venture. Though Poacha was tempted, as he was practically bankrupt by then, he said no. “After my refusal, by boss started misbehaving with me. He would fire me for no reason. But I stood my ground,” says the 43-year-old who was also approached by venture capitalists but and gave them the same answer.
Stories of people being helped by the website are numerous. “The portal and the listed donors were a great help and out of the 24 donors that they listed to us from Gurgaon with O+ group when we logged in, almost all got back and those who had not donated blood during the last 90 days made their donation. Offers kept pouring in but by then I had lost my sister-in-law. Gurgaon was a new place for us with no relatives and a huge requirement of blood — more than 100 units — we did not know what to do. We had over 200 people donating blood for our patient, all through indianblooddonors.com. This was overwhelming and unbelievable,” Bhawna Bairoliya tells you.
“It is a wonderful experience to get help from people you have never met in life. It restores your faith in human goodness. Once again I thank you for all the help I got from this organisation,” blogged Ramchandra Phawade on the website.
The portal today has 50,000 registered donors from different parts of the country. And Poacha’s just launched mobile phone initiative has registered at least a 1,000 registrations a month. Poacha is now running another initiative www.givemedicines.org which is about donating unused medicines to needy people.

How to
Register as a blood donor : SMS BLOOD to 9665500000
Example : BLOOD 011 B+ve
Search for blood donors: SMS DONOR to 9665500000
Example DONOR 011 B+ve
Search for blood donors in your area:(Especially to be used in Metros) SMS DONOR PIN to 9665500000
Example : DONOR PIN 110002 AB+