Ketto is Asia’s largest crowd-funding platform.

Over the past three years, the company has managed over 10,000 successful campaigns and raised over ₹40, crore including mobilising close to ₹2 crore for relief efforts during calamites such as Chennai floods, Nepal earthquake and many other event.

In an exclusive interview to Bloomberg TV India , Ketto co-founders Kunal Kapoor (who is also a Bollywood actor) and Varun Sheth narrate their arduous journey in giving shape to a new concept. They believe that more and more Indians are donating for social causes. Excerpts:

Tell us about the early days of your entrepreneurship.

Have you been in this space before? What prompted you two to get your hands dirty on a new venture and take that risk?

Kunal: Personally, I was always drawn towards any sort of business that has a positive social impact. I think for anything to sustain it has to be a profitable business.

But as long as that business is making a difference to the world around you, it is a lovely space to be in. So for me, I was always drawn to that.

And at that particular time, about 5-6 years back, I was working very closely with a number of NGOs.

I found that these NGOs were facing a number of issues.

Primarily, the cost of raising funds was very high. So, for every ₹100 they raised, ₹40-60 went into raising that money.

And I felt that it was very unfair because a lot more money had to reach the people who actually needed the money.

Secondly, I found that there was certain amount of gravity and seriousness attached to the whole social space in the country, which kept a lot of people away from it because they feel: ‘This is not to me, this is all very serious and it’s not what I can do’.

Whereas, in the west and in the whole social eco system there, I found that people there really devote time — celebrities are involved, they run marathons; there are garage sales.

There, it is really fun and interesting, which makes it very easy to include a lot of people.

That was something we needed to bring here.

And at that point of time, I happened to meet Varun who had worked in the social space and was grappling with similar problems. He was trying to find a solution to this.

And for us, the most obvious solution was using technology to empower people, and crowd funding was right on top of our mind. That’s how Ketto came into existence.

Both of you put in your own money, got into a new space and focussed your time in the social space.

It is difficult to break the mould and mindsets.

How did you cope up in setting up the basic operation in the early days and get people on board with the idea?

Varun: The first 12-18 months were really difficult. Both of us don’t come from a technology background.

So we didn’t have any idea on how to set up an online platform and how to make everything happen on the internet.

We just went with the idea and thought we will learn as we go along, and we will try and figure this out.

The first 18 months were very difficult in terms of driving a lot of people online to come and run campaigns and sign up and use the platform. Ketto works as an online marketplace by itself.

On one side, there are people who are looking for money and on the other side people who are giving money.

So, initially to convince people that this is a great platform to setup a campaign, run a campaign and raise funds, and to use all these features that we build, was really challenging.

So we really worked hands-on — going to their houses, using their computers/smart phones, and actually pressing buttons for them to tell them what had to be done.

We had to write content/stories for them so that they could share it the right way and tell the story in the right manner.

A lot of hands-on effort was required in the details to see that the platform was utilised in the right manner.

Can you give an example of an early successful campaign?

Varun: One of the most beautiful stories I have witnessed in my life is that of a girl called Shweta Katti, in early 2014.

Shweta contacted us through a non-profit organisation called Kranti. This girl was the first person from her district to to go the US for studies.

She is in Bard College in New York with full scholarship.

The challenge was to to get her there and provide for her living until she got a job and earned some money.

The scholarship was in place and the college was giving her lodging as well. But the problem was to reach there and setg her up there, pay the day-to-day expenses.

So Kranti reached out to us. We put up a campaign and in a matter of 20 days we were will able to raise ₹6.5 lakh, which got her the air ticket, and helped set her up for 6-9 months till she started earning.

Do you think it’s a good time to use the social media to scale up your operation?

Kunal: Sure. The social media is one of the biggest pieces. A lot of the sharing (of ideas) happens via social media.

But the challenge really was, when we started, nobody had heard of crowd funding.

It was not only educating people who wanted to put up a campaign, but also educating people on how to contribute. Our aim was to create something that is easy, fun and transparent. You could be sitting in an airport or at home, or a movie set, and you would like to help somebody.

It will take you 2-3 minutes to do that. But the education was difficult.

It was all the more difficult to find investors. When we wanted some more money and reached out to investors, we had to educate them, too.

What did the investors want to see?

Varun: One big doubt some people have is, do enough people donate in India.

Our belief is that tons and tons of people are already donating billions of dollars in India every year. One of the challenges is in terms of conviction and in terms of market size for people contributing in India.

Some investors, who have already invested in Ketto, have aligned with our vision and they believe that there is a large opportunity out there.

Are there any data points or matrix to show that people are donating more in India?

Kunal: Within our organisation, the amount we raised in a year, three years ago, is the same we raised in a month last year, and in a week, now.

So it is obvious that the more awareness you create, the more people come forward and the more you will be able to raise.

There is a large section of people who donate, which is unorganised and there is no data for that. I believe the market is far larger.

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