ImpactGuru: Crowdfunding Startup | Free Fundraising Platform for Healthcare

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Would you have been able to imagine a crowdfunding startup to be able to meet all your healthcare needs? This is where ImpactGuru comes in. In a survey carried out by NSO in July 2017-June 2018, it was found that only 14% of the rural population and 19% of the urban population had health expenditure coverage. Again, according to an analysis published in The Lancet in 2018, around 1.6 million people in India die due to inadequate healthcare. The Indian healthcare segment is clouded by many such disturbing data. However, it is good to see that not just the Government, but many NGOs and startups are coming up to solve the long prevailing issues in the healthcare sector. Today we are talking about one such startup, that is making a remarkable attempt to make quality healthcare accessible even to the poorest, through crowdfunding. Mumbai-based ImpactGuru is not just helping people to raise funds for healthcare, but for various other social and personal causes as well.

In order to scale the fundraising for PPE for doctors, nurses and health care workers across India, ImpactGuru received INR. 40 lakh grant in the form of matching funds from The Action Covid-19 Team (ACT). The company added up to 20% in matching donations via the ACT Grant on every single donation for selected Public and Private Hospitals on its platform.

ImpactGuru - Highlights

ImpactGuru - Latest News
About ImpactGuru
ImpactGuru - Industry Details
ImpactGuru - The Idea of Starting up
ImpactGuru - Founders and Team
ImpactGuru - USP
ImpactGuru - No Platform Fee
ImpactGuru - Business and Revenue Model
ImpactGuru - Challenges Faced
ImpactGuru - Funding and Investors
ImpactGuru - Partners
ImpactGuru - Awards and Achievements
ImpactGuru - Future Plans
ImpactGuru - FAQs

ImpactGuru - Latest News

6th October 2021 - ImpactGuru witnessed a rise in people seeking financial help for treatment. Around 25,000 patients have been assisted so far by ImpactGuru and half of these patients were assisted post-January 2020.

2nd October 2021 - ImpactGuru has successfully crowdfunded over Rs. 75 lakh cumulatively contributed by over 700 donors in 2 weeks to cover treatment expenses of 2 brothers fighting Hunter’s Syndrome.

About ImpactGuru

ImpactGuru was born with a mission to make healthcare accessible to all and save more lives. It is a tech-for-good platform that provides complete crowdfunding solutions to empower individuals, NGOs and social enterprises to raise funds for medical emergencies, personal needs, creative projects or any social cause - be it big or small.

"An ImpactGuru is someone who envisions change, who finds solutions to social problems, who steps up to support another change-maker, who makes kindness a habit, who dares to follow his/her dream, or who simply helps out a friend in need. We believe that each individual holds the power to effect great change and given the right tools and the right backing, can become an ImpactGuru himself/herself " quotes ImpactGuru CEO Piyush Jain.

Starting a fundraiser campaign in ImpactGuru is easy. One just has to get started by clicking on the 'Start a Fundraiser' tab on the ImpactGuru website or app, fill in the required details to create the fundraiser campaign. Using ImpactGuru's story builder feature, one can put up one's cause of raising money in an appealing way to attract more donors.

Once created, the fundraiser campaign is shared online. The money received from the donors is transferred to the beneficiary's account after deducting the applicable fee and charges.

ImpactGuru - Industry Details

India’s private healthcare spend stands at $90 billion a year. Of this, merely one-third is covered by insurance and the balance of $60 billion is met largely with borrowings from friends and family. Capturing 10% of this segment would mean a medical crowdfunding market of around $6 billion. This is the segment ImpactGuru is looking to tap.

Healthcare crowdfunding is the most disruptive solution to address this problem. There are no loans or interest to be paid off when it comes to crowdfunding as funds raised online is considered as a donation.

ImpactGuru - The Idea of Starting up

The idea began to form in Piyush's mind while he was working with Instilgo, a US-based non-profit organization.

"When I decided to go to Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, I found my calling when I accepted a fellowship with Instiglio, a US non-profit focused on using social impact bonds to help non-profits scale" recalls ImpactGuru founder Piyush Jain.

Besides, while at Harvard, Piyush assisted his Professor in teaching a class on financial management in non-profit Organizations. He also co-authored a paper on - 'Non-Equity Financing for Entrepreneurial Ventures'. For writing the research paper, Piyush had to explore different avenues to finance social initiatives. During this research, Piyush realized that the crowdfunding market in Indian is largely untapped and it is his willingness to do something in the field of crowdfunding that made him start ImpactGuru.

Fortunately, both Khushboo and Piyush shared the same vision. Piyush's knowledge of finance and technology clubbed with the brand, marketing and communications skillsets of Khushboo had garnered over the years. It does require a fantastic partnership and they have been very lucky to forge that successfully.

The startup was incubated at Harvard Innovation Lab in August 2014 and at PACT, Singapore in May 2015.

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ImpactGuru - Founders and Team

ImpactGuru was founded by a couple of entrepreneurs, Piyush Jain and Khushboo Jain.

ImpactGuru founder and CEO Piyush Jain is a BSc in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School. He did Masters in Public Policy, Business and Government Policy from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government. Piyush worked with reputed organizations like JP Morgan, Instiglio, San Francisco based fintech firm SoFi, the Boston Consulting Group and RB Investments, before starting ImpactGuru in 2017.

ImpactGuru co-founder and COO Khushboo Jain come from a fashion designing and fashion marketing background. Khushboo is an alumna of London College of Fashion, University of Arts London and Parsons School of Design. Khushboo did her Bachelors in Commerce from Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, and an MBA from Welingkar Institute of Management. Prior to joining her husband in his venture, Khusboo worked with brands like Kansai Nerolac Paints Limited and fashion brands like TheLabelLife.com and Manish Malhotra.

Piyush is backed by an awesome and dedicated team who truly stand with the vision and mission of ImpactGuru. Some core members of the ImpactGuru team are-

• Vikas Kaul, the Chief Product Officer of ImpactGuru is an IIMK graduate.  He is an ex-employee of Quikr and Deloitte.
• Ankita Kumari is Vice President, Operations at ImpactGuru. She is an engineering graduate from Amity University Noida and an ex-employee of PSTakeCare and TinyOwl.
• Sandeep Tripathy - Head, Business Development, Ex- PSTakeCare, IIT Bombay.

ImpactGuru - USP

What makes ImpactGuru stand out is that they are the only crowdfunding platform to have their own story builder to help customers write great stories as it’s a major pain point in the industry today. It has an AI-supported story builder for medical fundraisers, with a template for all campaigners to develop their own standardized campaign stories. It’s a first in the world innovation in crowdfunding globally!

ImpactGuru is also the first crowdfunding player in India to launch a smartphone app for customers. The app presents the user with a quick view of their fundraiser, thus enabling them to keep track of the progress of the campaign, get real-time donation notifications and post updates.  

ImpactGuru.com has become the largest crowdfunding platform in India for medical expenses. In total, ImpactGuru has raised around INR 950 Crore from over 2 lakh donors from 150 countries.

ImpactGuru - No Platform Fee

ImpactGuru has extended free fundraising to all causes by offering a 0% platform fee. It has Mobilized $200 million/INR.1500 crores through its platform and global partners, since inception.

Free fundraising is made available to all types of fundraisers who are hosted on the platform - It can be patients with medical emergencies (Covid-19, organ transplant, cancer) or NPOs/Individual fundraising programs for any causes. By this, ImpactGuru has completely waived off-platform fees with an intention to maximize the funds raised by fundraisers.

In order to sustain the platform and meet operational activities to provide a free fundraising platform, donors will be asked to provide any amount of voluntary tips.

In a joint statement ImpactGuru.com’s Co-Founders Piyush Jain and Khushboo Jain said, “In the last 5 years, crowdfunding on ImpactGuru has now become the preferred way for people to finance critical illness bills at hospitals given the low level of insurance penetration in India. With the extension of our free fundraising options to all fundraisers, we hope to accelerate our ambition of helping finance the critical illnesses of over 1 million / 10 lakh patients over the next decade.”

ImpactGuru - Business and Revenue Model

But how does ImpactGuru make money? It has a highly scalable, asset-light, transparent revenue model. It charges an average of 8% of total funds raised as to its fees with 5% directly being net revenue. It charges additional fixed fees for premium services such as digital marketing, video, content support.

I was keen on a business model that would add value and meaning to the community. Our vision is to make sure that nobody in India has to ever struggle to fund their medical treatment due to lack of money. - Piyush Jain

ImpactGuru offers various packages that one can opt for fundraising.

ImpactGuru - Challenges Faced

Social problems are so immense in India, that often one can get disillusioned by the impact one creates i.e. whether one’s intervention is moving the needle or not. There are many challenges and dilemmas that the ImpactGuru team needs to face on a day-to-day basis. This is what Piyush has to say regarding the issues the team faces-  

At ImpactGuru, we often face an ethical dilemma. Private hospitals will not proceed with treatment without the funds, say of 5 children whom are near death without a critical emergency surgery. It is an overwhelming feeling as we will be disappointing someone or maybe more as we have limited resources as an organization and limited donors to reach out to fund each of the 5 surgeries successfully. How to handle the mental pressure and how to execute the task is the pressing concern. It’s very important to keep the perspective that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. We thus pick cases where we can have the maximum impact given the short time. We select cases such as transplant, heart surgeries, cancer rather than dengue, malaria, diarrhoea.

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ImpactGuru - Funding and Investors

ImpactGuru has raised a total of $4.5M in funding over 5 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Mar 6, 2020, from a Seed round. The ImpactGuru funding details are mentioned below:

ImpactGuru - Partners

ImpactGuru has a strategic partnership with GlobalGiving.org, the world's largest non-profit crowdfunding platform based in the US and UK in October 2016. It is the only crowdfunding platform in the world that can offer Indian, US, and UK tax benefits to Indian and international donors.

ImpactGuru has also partnered with Apollo patients nationwide which makes it the preferred crowdfunding platform for all.

Recently, in early July 2021 Cure SMA Foundation of India, a public charitable trust has collaborated with ImpactGuru. The partnership is to support all its registered SMA patients in India.

In April 2016, ImpactGuru partnered with Fundnel, an investment platform based in Singapore. This partnership allowed ImpactGuru to tap into philanthropic and investment capital from the Indian diaspora based in Southeast Asia.

In September 2016, ImpactGuru partnered with UN Women (an entity of United Nations) to run Project Inspire, an initiative to support social entrepreneurs working for women empowerment.

ImpactGuru - Awards and Achievements

ImpactGuru has won the following awards worldwide.

• Khushboo Jain featured as a Leading Woman in Business 2021 List by The Economic Times & Femina.
• Khushboo Jain was recognized as Social Activist For Indefatigable Service During Covid-19 Crisis by the Punjab Govt. Dept Of Health & Family Welfare.
• Piyush Jain featured in 2021 List of Nationwide Awards 40 Under 40.
• Awarded as Best Social Impact Startup by Drivers Of Digital Awards.
• Awarded as Best Digital Startup by Drivers Of Digital Awards.
• Piyush & Khushboo Jain featured in 2019 List of Fortune India 40 Under 40.
• NITI Aayog & United Nations - 2019 Women Transforming India Awards featured Khushboo Jain in Winning Top 15.
• Recognized among top 5 startups in India and raised investment funding on live TV on Tie The Knot: Real Funding, Unreal Speeds, CNBC TV18’s longest-running shows – Young Turks.
• ImpactGuru was declared the winner of Maharashtra Startup Week 2019, organized by the Maharashtra State Innovation Society.
• BusinessworldTectors Awards 2018 – Tech Companies To Watch Out For.
• TechCircle 2018 Public Choice Award for Best Social Impact Startup award.
• MedAchievers HEALTH NXT 2018 Rising Startup Award.
• 2018 Top 3 Startups in West Zone, Start Smart Awards 2018.
• Businessworld BW Disrupt Social Woman Entrepreneur Award.
• YourStory SheSparks Awards 2018 - Fintech & Financial Inclusion category.
• Social Samosa Social Media Superwoman 2018.

ImpactGuru - Future Plans

Expanding business in Middle East markets is the next on the cards with the help of some investors from the region who have recently invested in the company.

I’m on a mission to make healthcare accessible to all and save more lives and cast the ImpactGuru net across geographies.

ImpactGuru - FAQs

What is ImpactGuru?

ImpactGuru is a Mumbai-based crowdfunding startup that offers a platform to raise funds for healthcare to social enterprises, NGOs, startups and individuals.

Who is the founder of ImpactGuru?

ImpactGuru was founded by a couple of entrepreneurs, Piyush Jain and Khushboo Jain.

How does ImpactGuru make money?

ImpactGuru charges a minimum of 5% fee on the funds raised by individuals on the platform.

What is ImpactGuru funding?

ImpactGuru has raised a total of $4.5M in funding over 5 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Mar 6, 2020, from a Seed round.

What documents are required to run a fundraiser on ImpactGuru?

NGOs: If you’re raising funds for an NGO, you will be required to submit your 12A certificate and 80G certificate. If you wish to receive foreign donations please also share your valid FCRA certificate.

Individuals (medical causes): If you’re an individual looking to raise funds for medical expenses you will be required to submit the patient’s identity details, test reports and invoice (if any), hospital/clinic name doctor’s name & contact details, beneficiary’s bank account details.

Individuals (other causes): For individuals looking to raise funds for other personal causes please share your identity proof and bank account details. It would help your fundraiser if you could provide any other documents that would validate your fundraising need.

Is ImpactGuru a legitimate site?

Yes, ImpactGuru is a legitimate and legal site.

Is ImpactGuru genuine?

Yes, all the cases are genuine. ImpactGuru itself verifies them to make sure that their platform is safe for both campaigners and donors.