Snapdeal is an Indian e-commerce company, based in New Delhi, India. In order to help people affected with COVID-19 infection and in need of plasma therapy, Snapdeal has launched the Sanjeevani initiative that will help people connect and find donors. The e-commerce platform will be leveraging its wide reach across small towns and cities of India and look for plasma donors. The platform ‘Sanjeevani’ can be easily accessed via mobile app or website. It is to note that plasma of recovered Coronavirus patients is administered to those who are hospitalised and battling the viral infection.
Sanjeevani will also be working towards raising awareness on how important it is for people to donate their plasma after recovering from the infection and is encouraging these people to come forth and donate. Patients as well as donors will have to register themselves at the platform using their details- mobile numbers/email ids and also mention some relevant information including blood group, age, location, along with their recovery date. Once registration is done, Snapdeal will use an algorithm to look for relevant matches and help concerned patients connect with potential donors. With Sanjeevani, Snapdeal states that it hopes to use its existing e-commerce network across the country to onboard possible plasma donors, and link Covid-19 patients and their peers to a database of donors. Snapdeal is the latest in a line of technology platforms that have put forth ways for people to find resources in this crisis time. The biggest of the lot, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, have offered resources such as SOS hubs for requests and queries to be collated under an umbrella, and of late, features integrated into apps such as Google Maps that offer answers towards patient queries. Snapdeal, on this note, aims to use its position as an e-commerce platform and use its outreach, especially in fringe cities and corners of India, to offer resources for those battling against the virus.
Sanjeevani was first launched to help the employees of Snapdeal find possible donors. But given that it has been especially hard to find eligible plasma donors at this time, Snapdeal has opened this platform for everyone. Right from Facebook and Google to startups such as HealthifyMe have introduced a slew of tools over the past few weeks to help people find slots for vaccination appointments
