Twitter launches initiative for blood donation in India

NEW DELHI: With an aim to help the cause of blood donation in India, San Francisco based micro blogging site, Twitter has launched a social initiative called BloodMatters. The company has partnered with Blood Donors India which is on Twitter with the handle @BloodDonorsIN. Blood Donors is a voluntary blood donation helpline on Twitter which has been working for the cause since 2008.

Twitter will be supporting the implementation of an automated response solution to scale the operations of @BloodDonorsIN, and will also amplify the real-time communication efforts of the handle with verification, promotion on Twitter, and use Twitter Lite to connect @BloodDonorsIN with people across the entire country, especially in areas with low bandwidth.

Taranjeet Singh, Country Director, Twitter India told ET that the initiative will help in combating the demand supply gap in blood donation in the country. “We looked at some data and realised that in terms of the number of blood requests, Bangalore is among the top five cities also South India being a key priority market for us, it made the perfect sense to launch the first phase programme in the city.”


Twitter is increasing being used by people and authorities in case of emergency situations or disaster management. Singh said that the platform was extensively deployed by relief agencies during the Mumbai Rains and the North East floods among others. He added that the company will partner more organisations for such initiatives in the future.

The company celebrated its twelfth anniversary on Tuesday. Singh also said that South India is a huge focus area for the company.

“With Karnataka state elections coming up, we are working with political parties to verify relevant accounts and conduct training and workshops on how to use Twitter etc,” Singh added that the company is keen to work with the police and the election commission to ensure that they are there on Twitter to correct any rumours or misinformation, and to engage with people on the electoral process. Twitter is also working out special collaborations around the IPL teams of Chennai and Bangalore since Cricket is a huge interest area along with movies where recent South Indian films such as Mersel and Babhubali doing very well on the platform.