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 no 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 receieved Rs. 40 lakh grant in the form of matching funds from The Action Covid-19 Team (ACT). The company added upto 20% in matching donations via the ACT Grant on every single donation for selected Public and Private Hospitals on its platform.
ImpactGuru - Highlights
| Startup Name | ImpactGuru |
|---|---|
| Headquarter | Mumbai |
| Founders | Piyush Jain, Khushboo Jain |
| Sector | Fintech focused on healthcare |
| Founded | 2014 |
About ImpactGuru
ImpactGuru - 0% Platform Fee
ImpactGuru - Industry Details
ImpactGuru - Founders and Team
ImpactGuru - The Idea and starting up
ImpactGuru - USP
ImpactGuru - Business and Revenue Model
ImpactGuru - Challenges
ImpactGuru - Funding
ImpactGuru - Partners
ImpactGuru - Awards & Achievements
ImpactGuru - Future Plans
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 storybuilder 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 are transferred to the beneficiary's account after deducting the applicable fee and charges.
ImpactGuru - 0% Platform Fee
ImpactGuru has extended free fundraising to all causes by offering 0% platform fee. It has Mobilized $200 million/Rs.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 program 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 tip.
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.”
StartupTalky
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 $60 billion is met largely with borrowings from friends and family. Capturing 10% of this segment would mean a medical crowdfunding market of around $6billion. 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 - Founders and Team
ImpactGuru was founded by couple entrepreneurs, Piyush and Khushboo Jain.
ImpactGuru founder and CEO Piyush Jain is a BSc in Economics from 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 comes 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 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 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 - The Idea and 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 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 skill sets 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.
ImpactGuru - USP
What makes ImpactGuru stand out is that they are the only crowdfunding platform to have their own storybuilder to help customers write great stories as it’s a major pain point in the industry today. It has an AI-supported storybuilder 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 Rs 950 Crore from over 2 lakh donors from 150 countries.
ImpactGuru - Business and Revenue Model
ImpactGuru has a highly scalable, asset light, transparent revenue model. It charges average 8% of total funds raised as 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
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 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.
ImpactGuru - Funding
ImpactGuru has raised a total of $2.5Mn from various investors around the globe.
| Date | Stage | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 2016 | Seed | $0.5 million (INR 3.3 crores) | RB Investments Pvt Ltd (Singapore based VC Fund) |
| November 2017 | Seed | Undisclosed | Venture Catalysts |
| May 2018 | Series A | US$2 million (Rs. 15 crores) | Apollo Hospitals Group, Currae Healthtech Fund, RB Investments, Shorooq Investments, Venture Catalysts with participation from various other investors from USA, Southeast Asia, and Middle East |
| December 2018 | Series A | $ 2 million | Shorooq Partners |
ImpactGuru - Partners
ImpactGuru has a strategic partnership with GlobalGiving.org, the world's largest nonprofit crowdfunding platform based in 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 ImpactGuru the preferred crowdfunding platform for all .
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 & Achievements
ImpactGuru has won following awards worldwide!
- 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 declared 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.
Author: Shubham Kumar
Source : https://startuptalky.com/impactguru-healthcare-crowdfunding-story/
Date : 2020-08-27T10:51:00.000Z