Blood donation marks V-Day in Bengaluru college

A private college in Bengaluru celebrated Valentine's Day in a special way by organising a voluntary blood donation camp, an official said on Friday.

"Our students celebrated Valentine's Day by donating blood," Gupta College Principal G.R. Sudhakara told IANS.

Kannada film producer Om Sai Prakash, who inaugurated the camp, said the students expressed their love by donating 112 units of blood collectively to the Lions Blood Bank in the city.

College Director B.S. Gupta also appreciated the students' act, as blood donated by each of them saves 4 lives.

In a related development, social media platform ShareChat said a whopping 2.5 million (25 lakh) of its users celebrated the day with romantic posts, which received 3 billion views through the day.

"Our love calculator made the digital platform more romantic on Valentine's Day", said the city-based company in a statement.

The platform, which claims to have about 60 million (6 crore) monthly active users, said posts in Hindi and Tamil were the highest in expressing love and affinity, with 5 lakh posts driving over 600 million views and 5 million WhatsApp shares.

"Both languages have driven the maximum engagement of over 800 million on our platform during Valentine's week," said the statement.

Around 1.5-lakh posts were in Kannada, with 40 lakh WhatsApp shares and 80 crore views.

"Our platform replicates the pulse of the nation. We understand the mood of the nation based on our users' engagement, as they have been waiting for Valentine's Day to celebrate their romantic relationship," said ShareChat communications head Rahul Nag. - IANS