For online crowd-funding platform Milaap, the contributions from non-metros seem to be gathering pace as compared to metros.

Its Co-founder Anoj Viswanathan told BusinessLine that there was increased awareness amongst the people in non-metros both – to donate and use this platform to raise funds for a cause.

“Coimbatore figured among the top 10 cities in the country in the number of donors in 2019. The number of donors swelled from 8,000 at the end of 2018 to around 30,000 as on date.”

“On the beneficiaries side too, there were close to 2,000 unique fund raisers at the end of 2019, accounting for cumulative growth of ₹ 8.5 crore, as compared to ₹3.5 crore raised at the end of the previous year.”

Close to 30 per cent of the donations are from repeat donors, Viswanathan said before adding that campaigns for raising funds were mostly for medical cause/ treatment, ranging between ₹50,000 and ₹5 lakh or more.

On Milaap’s growth, he said, “we grew 1.7X times in 2018-19.”

The platform does around 1.2-1.3 lakh transactions a month. “Thanks to UPI and the payment ecosystem, the ability to distribute content is seamless today.”

Asked if economic slowdown had impacted the fund raising platform’s activity, he said “transaction sizes have come down, but the picture is not clear yet. Absolute number of transactions and new donors are on the rise though.”