Khushboo and Piyush Jain are all smiles as they settle down for the interview. The entrepreneur couple showcase a camaraderie which only comes from knowing each other for more than a decade. When Piyush is asked if they were childhood friends before they got married, he smiles and answers “more like teenhood friends”.
The Jains have a reason to be elated, their crowdfunding startup ImpactGuru.com, recently secured a round of funding led by Apollo Hospitals. Founded in 2014, the startup focuses on finding crowdfunding solutions for healthcare, social change and personal projects.
Crowdfunding is certainly an innovative venture. However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for the founders. Initially, it was hard for the founders to explain the focus of their venture to investors since crowdfunding is all about harnessing the goodwill of strangers to donate funds to those in need.
What worked in the couple’s favour was their sheer persistence and their trust in the goodness of people. According to the Jains, Indians are givers and by creating Impactguru.com, they have given a platform to not just those living in the country but also the Indian diaspora across the world, to extend a charitable hand.
According to their website, Impactguru is the most successful crowdfunding platform in India, having raised around Rs 130 crore till now, impacting the fortunes of more than 10,000 individuals and organisations in a short span of four years.
So how does it work? Well, the process is fairly simple, say you have a medical emergency that requires Rs 10 lakh. Instead of borrowing it from friends and family, you approach ImpactGuru to start a fundraising campaign.
After a series of checks which includes speaking to your doctors, the Impactguru team agrees to host your campaign on their website. You can now use a tool called “Story Builder” which helps you create a narrative about your need to raise these funds and start a campaign. Once the fund target is reached, you don’t need to pay the money back and the funds are mostly transferred to the hospital treating you so that the money isn’t mismanaged in any way. Khushboo assures that they take their background checks very seriously.
When asked about how much the company is worth as of now, the founders provide their take, “We measure our success on the basis of how many lives we impact, not in terms of valuations.”
