Tech Drive to Save Lives

Tapping crowdfunding for the healthcare sector has been impactful and innovative in recent times as was seen when Hyderabad topped amongst major cities in raising Rs.50 lakhs cumulatively for Covid-19 diagnosed patients. This was made possible via ImpactGuru.com, a donation-based crowdfunding fintech platform offering global funding solutions to individuals and startups, NGOs and social enterprises. Brainchild of a couple, Corporate Citizen gained insights in an interaction with the Fortune "40 under 40" listers' Piyush Jain, Co-founder and CEO (Strategy, Finance and Operations) and Khushboo Jain, Co-founder and COO (Marketing, Communications and Design)

Khushboo and Piyush Jain

Piyush Jain is a Wharton Business School graduate and Khushboo Jain is an alumnus of Welingkar Institute of Management, the concept of ImpactGuru.com, was incubated at Harvard Innovation Lab's Venture Initiation Programme in 2014 and launched in January 2015. The platform has since mobilised $200 million (INR 1500 crores) with over 10,00,000 donors across 165 countries contributing to various causes clocking an average of 2.5 donations per minute. Besides, over 800 active fundraisers are being managed to support pandemic struck daily wagers, elderly, healthcare workers and animals.

"Through our platform, we have fundamentally changed the established practice of how critical illnesses are financed in India, not through loans or insurance or selling assets but by healthcare crowdfunding," said Piyush Jain, Co-founder and CEO of ImpactGuru.com.

A recipient of the Entrepreneur India magazine's 'Social Entrepreneur of the Year' award', Piyush relinquished his earlier profession as an investment banker (J.P Morgan - New York, Hong Kong and London) and management consultant (BCG and EY - Southeast Asia and India). A Joseph Wharton Scholar with a degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Piyush has also co-authored a paper at Harvard Business School on innovative ways to finance entrepreneurial and social ventures.

His better half, Khushboo Jain, moved away from her glamourous world of fashion, branding, and marketing into the social sector and into crowdfunding. An alumnus of the London College of Fashion and Parsons-The New School of Design in New York, she was a fashion marketer for Valiram (Singapore) and handled prominent brands such as Hackett, La Martina, and Jimmy Choo. Her association with celebrity fashion designer Manish Malhotra engaged her in a fashion merchandising and buying role; she also collaborated with an actormodel and designer, Malaika Arora Khan's 'The Closet Label' (now The Label Life).

DUAL DYNAMICS

"There came a point where we realised we wanted to be social entrepreneurs. Piyush and I were keen on a business model that would let us add value and meaning to the community. Setting up a crowdfunding platform catered to both our interests and agendas," said Khusboo Jain, Co-founder and COO at ImpactGuru.com.

Khushboo Jain is one of the top 15 winning women entrepreneurs at NITI Aayog & United Nations, Women Transforming India Awards, 2019, finds that the journey so far has been filled with learnings. "No textbook or prior work experience can truly equip what each day of your business has in store," said Khushboo.

It was the couple's strong passion to make a difference in the lives of people and to save more lives that inspired the duo to start a fintech company focused on making healthcare more affordable. They co-founded ImpactGuru. com with a mission to help people in India to tap crowdfunding solutions for their healthcare needs and as a social change vehicle. "Both of us bring together different skillsets to the table-my knowledge of finance and technology and Khushboo's brand, marketing and communications skillsets, garnered over the years", said Piyush.

MAINSTREAM TRANSITIONS

As a student at Harvard University, Piyush got his venture prototype incubated at Harvard. "I wanted to build a crowdfunding venture with the foresight of creating a 'GoFundMe' of India. ImpactGuru was born and was accepted into the Venture Initiation Program of the Harvard Innovation Lab in 2014," said Piyush.

While the duo started out as a 'tech-for-good', a platform providing complete crowdfunding solutions to empower individuals, NGOs & social enterprises for raising funds for personal needs, creative projects or any social cause, their prime focus rests on healthcare emergencies.

Their core mission was to reduce the probability of deaths that often occur due to lack of healthcare funds in Indian households. "We enable out-of-pocket medical expenses through crowdfunding for patients in India suffering from critical and long-term illness especially those below the poverty line, also middle class patients who have drained their finances sustaining long-term treatments (such as cancer, organ transplants, accidents)," said Piyush.

While crowdfunding is yet to become mainstream in India, the 'crowd' is gradually getting acquainted to the accessibility of internet-enabled philanthropic mode, which has emerged as a 'digital warrior' in the wake of the pandemic and lockdown phases. Rising internet access and digital payments penetration continues to complement the growth of the industry in India

"In digital payments, there is a major disruption in India with the growth of UPI and now WhatsApp Pay. The launch of WhatsApp Pay will be a huge catalyst for crowdfunding in India, having witnessed first-hand impact of WeChat and WeChat Pay for crowdfunding, driven by a culture of generosity and a high propensity for people to pay digitally through social media," he said.

Their ability to accept donations in the UK and US currencies was a direct outcome of their strategic alliances with global crowdfunding entities the likes of GlobalGiving.org, Give2Asia.org, which also enabled Indian NGOs that operate via ImpactGuru to offer tax benefits to donors based in Hong Kong.

"There came a point where we realised we wanted to be social entrepreneurs. Piyush and I were keen on a business model that would let us add value and meaning to the community. Setting up a crowdfunding platform catered to both our interests and agendas"

- Khusboo Jain

(R to L) Gopi Shenoy (wife), Amit Shenoy (patient)
and Khushboo Jain at Apollo Hospital, Navi Mumbai

FUNDING FACTORS

Piyush explained that while their funding model is scalable, it works on an asset-light and transparent revenue model and that there is no upfront fee for using their platform.

"We recently introduced a 0% ImpactGuru Platform fee option to all types of fundraisers hosted on the platform - irrespective of whether it's for patients facing medical emergencies such as Covid-19, cancer, organ transplants, or for nonprofits fundraising for their programmes, or for individuals raising money to fund animal causes, education expenses, or other causes that they are passionate about. Through this new fundraising option, ImpactGuru is waiving off its platform fees so that fundraisers can receive maximum funds for the causes they support," said Piyush.

In return, the platform works on a sustainability concept in providing free fundraising option. "Donors are asked for a voluntary tip and these optional tips are expected to help ImpactGuru fund costs relating to technology infrastructure, dedicated staff, fundraiser outreach, due diligence and vetting, disbursing funds, and updating donors on fund utilisation to ensure continued trust and safety on the platform," he said

On the management of funds and causes, ImpactGuru mobilises itself through its dedicated batch of campaign managers assigned to fundraisers in each of the allotted category Medical, NGOs, Personal or Creative causes. "These representatives check on the credibility and authenticity of the Campaign by evaluating the documents shared, which support the case that has been applied for including hospital bills, official documents from authorities, ID proof etc. and coach customers accordingly on how they can fundraise effectively," said Piyush.

AI AND TECH-DECK

The new age triggers have channelised ImpactGuru to adapt Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an integral tech-drive as it claims to be the only crowdfunding platform in India with an Android and iOS app for campaigners to effectively manage their fundraisers.

"We have built an AI-supported story builder for medical fundraisers, with a template for all campaigners to develop their own standardised campaign stories. This is a pivotal component of any fundraiser and the reason why donors will choose to donate. Our goal was to free the campaigner of the added responsibility of creating a story when they are already managing their own/ loved one's sickness", he said.

The larger picture emerged in 2018, with Apollo Group of Hospitals, which co-led the venture's $2 million (INR 14 crores) in 'Series A round', creating a successful partnership. "This was a transformational partnership forged for the first time between a crowdfunding platform and a large hospital group that has benefitted thousands of patients. After Apollo Hospital Group's investment in ImpactGuru, several other leading hospitals have partnered with us. We are now connected with over 1500 hospitals across the country at various levels to help their patients raise funds," said Piyush. In the near future, ImpactGuru intends to work with more hospitals from Tier 2 and 3 cities in India

Other corporate-driven campaigns that have tie-ins with ImpactGuru include Ford's fundraising that support their driver partners through Office Ride Driver Fund, also, Indian online supermarket majors such as BigBasket, Grofers, restaurant-tech platform, Dineout, online medical stores, Netmeds, PharmEasy have also partnered with ImpactGuru in their mission to support their own philanthropic campaigns.

ALIGNING WITH COVID WARRIORS

ImpactGuru.com received an INR 40 lakh grant in April 2020, as matching funds from The Action Covid-19 Team (ACT), to scale fundraising for Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) for doctors, nurses and healthcare workers across India. ImpactGuru added up to 20% in matching donations via the ACT Grant on every single donation on behalf of selected public and private-sector Hospitals on its platform.

With the funds raised so far on select fundraisers, ImpactGuru.com has facilitated the supply of over 42,000 PPEs including N95 Masks, 3 Ply Masks, boxes of gloves to various hospitals such as Max, Nanavati and Cygnus.

"The launch of WhatsApp Pay will be a huge catalyst for crowdfunding in India, having witnessed first-hand impact of WeChat and WeChat Pay for crowdfunding, driven by a culture of generosity and a high propensity for people to pay digitally through social media"

- Piyush Jain

SNAPSHOT: COVID-19 KEY FUNDRAISERS

INR 43 lakh raised to cover hospital expenses of a patient diagnosed with coronavirus in China. Dial4242 (India), an ambulance aggregator platform, provided free/discounted ambulance service to the needy, via funds raised on ImpactGuru.

NGO KVN Foundation spearheaded ''FeedMyCity'', a drive which is providing freshly cooked nutritious meals to needy families in five cities -- Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Noida and Chennai. Yash Charitable Trust (YCT) has initiated a crowdfunding campaign on ImpactGuru.com to sustain operations and ensure salaries are paid to the workforce of Juhu-based Cafe' Arpan and their other livelihood programmes

TWINNING WORK-LIFE

While Piyush oversees overall strategy and finances, Khushboo heads ImpactGuru's marketing, communications and its design teams and like any other couple switching off from the common 'work' mode can be challenging. "It was an acquired skill set and we have learnt the art gradually", said Khushboo.

"We believe the only way to sustain for a longer period of time is to take adequate breaks to unwind and to have a good work life balance. Travelling, movies, music, makes us hit the 'pause' button and help lower the stress levels," she said.

COUPLE TIPS

Motivate each other when the going gets tough as is often the case at a startup. Gather courage to stay resilient in troubled waters.

Constantly fuel each other's unanimous drive to sustain the joint mission of saving more lives.

Besides, both are big foodies but equally dedicated fitness enthusiasts and make it a point to try new cuisines as well as different workout regimes on most weekends.