Manan Khanna, a 12th grade student from Delhi who is always passionate to contribute a part of his time to help underprivileged people and give something back to society, has developed an artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI and ML)-based donation platform named “DEasyy.”
Its primary objective is to seamlessly connect mass donors (individual donors or restaurants/stores/groups) with operating social NGOs or institutions to enable global donations.
In an interview with Sputnik, Khanna shares some of the details of his donation platform, what motivated him to launch it, as well as his plans for the future.
Sputnik: What is your donation platform all about?
Khanna: DEasyy is an end-to-end video-based donation platform that connects mass donors and the representatives of NGOs seamlessly to help underprivileged people. It can be downloaded from both App Store as well as Play Store.
Through this platform donors can schedule their donations under multiple categories from their house and representatives of NGOs pick those as per scheduled time and deliver it to the beneficiaries. We also track the donations through this platform.
The multiple categories include food, clothes, footwear, books/stationary, toys, furniture, phone/computer, organizing birthday celebrations, etc.
Some of the other key features of the platform include the SOS (emergency alert) option. Through this we can reach out to any person who is in need of urgent help in terms of expensive medicines, blood, etc. We also have a checklist to ensure the quality of the donation. Apart from this, we also have in-app donation calendar management to sort out the donation throughout the month or year.
Sputnik: How did the idea of developing such a platform evolve?
Khanna: I have been associated with a couple of NGOs where I saw real challenges while reaching out to the end beneficiaries. I felt that some of the ongoing social initiatives have very limited coverage because of a lack of trust and transparency among donors, time-consuming ecosystems, and lack of awareness about social needs.
Despite realizing the challenges and thinking of developing something to mitigate them, I was not able to start. One day I saw some stuff in the dustbin of my apartment. It was thrown by someone as waste. But it looked reusable and could have been donated to someone in need.
I realized that the person who must have thrown it might not have been able to reach out to the needy ones so threw it. This triggered my urge to develop a platform which could be helpful for the donors as well as beneficiaries. This is when the conceptualization of DEasyy started.
The idea of developing the platform is to connect mass donors to end beneficiaries through NGOs and social associations to enable donations anytime from anywhere.
The journey of DEasyy, which started from December 2020, has been a very interesting journey full of challenges, ups, and downs, exploration, research, time-to-time on-field feedback, creation of a team, funding, and launching of the product.
This has not been easy at all, but in the end [it turned out] successful and, more importantly, has been well received by everyone around.
Sputnik: How do you find the beneficiaries and the donors?
Khanna: NGOs on the platform connect with the beneficiaries as they already have the database and are working for a social cause while as far as connecting with donors is concerned we started donor reach out drives through social media groups, resident welfare associations (RWAs), school parents’ groups, advertisements, among others.
This all started after DEasyy app was available on App Store and Play Store for download. At times, we even visited residences of donors to get the app downloaded.
Sputnik: Have you received any funding from financers to develop the platform? Also, have you received any government support?
Khanna: Yes, we have received a small funding from one multi-national company. We have used that funding to build a small team to develop this platform covering varied skills.
As far as government support is concerned, we have not approached any government agencies as of now.
Sputnik: Have you collaborated with NGOs to reach out to the maximum number of beneficiaries?
Khanna: Yes, we have done that with a few NGOs already and are planning to connect to multiple NGOs across India now.
Sputnik: You are studying at school and developed such a noble platform. What do you wish to do in your career?
Khanna: I will be turning 18 in February 2023 and currently studying in grade 12 at Delhi Public School in R. K. Puram. I will be going to college next year.
I would love to take this techno-social start-up venture to the next level by scaling it pan-India or even globally. Along with this, I will use my interest in upcoming technologies to innovate similar or new systems to benefit this world and society as much as I can.
I believe that you have to fight, sacrifice, and work hard to reach your dream of giving something back to society.