Businesses are crucial for this world. You exchange what you have for something that you want. Trade is the basic brick that establishes the foundation of businesses. Which cements humans together with better cooperation abilities. As an entrepreneur goes about starting a business, he faces many problems. One of the problems is the issue of raising capital. If done correctly can change the future of enterprise for the better. Otherwise, it will sink the whole ship of sustenance.
Money capital is the lifeblood of every investment. Without this fuel, there can be no product, no property, no sales and no cash flows. This is an article talking about the same issue of raising capital. Read to know, should you even raise money? when you should not raise money and when to stop raising capital.
If you don’t know about raising capital, or If you don’t know how you will end up managing money – don’t raise funds. So, do your homework first. Deciding in advance, the goals and goalkeepers for the organisation is crucial. It will make the road to success otherwise it will be a recipe for disaster.
Remember, raising capital is for achieving scale. Scale means growth in this context. Raising money is essentially losing control and getting scale. You need to let go of total control in some cases of raising funds. So, If you are not ready to jump off a cliff with a firm belief in your team and culture. Don’t seek a raise.
Another con is simple yet thoughtful. You don’t need to raise. Yes, a raise is the least type of money that an entrepreneur wants. Even a Venture capitalist will tell you this. VC cheques are the worst kind of money. The favourable kind of money is your customers’ money. Your own revenue. The best way is to go bootstrapped. Again, If you are risk-averse, stay put.
Disadvantages of Raising Funds
The first question that a rational person should ask is “Should he/she really raise money?” This question is a valid and important point to consider. Raising capital is not a fairy tale, it has its downfalls too.
If you are not ready to face the downfalls, smart advice will be that you stop chasing funds. These disadvantages can affect different people differently. Some might be more affected than others.
Let us see some of the responsibilities that you will have to carry if you are seeking capital.
Ownership
When someone tries to raise capital, he is often left with the choice of diluting ownership of the company. Which means lessening the controlling power of entrepreneurs. It will allow interference of the Venture Capitalist in the decisions.
This interference can be effective or it can affect the growth of the company, depending on the scenario. If the entrepreneur is someone who wants full control of the company, reconsider the choice of raising funds for your startup.
Accountability
An entrepreneur who raises capital has to be accountable. Depending on which source of raising he chooses, he needs to be accountable. The source or the Venture Capital can push and pinch for specific and exact usage of money.
A business person has to iterate his ways in different scenarios. He/she needs to be experimenting with a product. In order to get the perfect product-market fit. In some cases “being accountable for the capital raised” can also reduce the experiments of an entrepreneur. Leaving no space or very little space for mistakes.
Debt
This can be seen as a subsection of the previous issue. Raising capital is debt. Some people might get overwhelmed by the thought of using others’ money. This heavy feeling of responsibility can disrupt the natural flow of an entrepreneur.
Which also points out someone’s personal relationship with money. A person having a bad relationship with money will fear its responsibility. That responsibility rises manifolds if the money is a debt.
When to Stop Raising Funds for your Startup?
If you are through the hurdle of deciding to raise capital. Let us discuss when to stop your fundraising rounds. It is imperative to mention that you need to take professional advice on this matter. Investors write a cheque when they are compelled by your work. When raising capital, remember the time frame. Check these points to get some bookmarks.
Ideal position –
So, when you’ve managed to impress an investor, make sure you know the ideal condition. The ideal condition is to raise as much as you want to reach profitability. The reason behind this is that it allows you to stop raising for more rounds. It will lessen the hassle one needs to go through for another round of funding. Remember to stop with an ideal cash position in mind.
Survival of Operations –
When raising capital, think about your burn rate. You need to consider how many months you are planning your operations to survive. It can be a year to 18 months. This definitive time frame set a bar for raising capital. Even though different products and startups have different burn rates, making sure your burn rate is in check is helpful.
The Growth Pace –
If your company is in a good cash flow situation. Like, when the company is adding more customers and revenues and employees. When it is growing really fast. Then you should refrain from raising large funds. The reason is that if you raise 2 to 4 years of funds at this growth pace, then by the end of 2 years you would earn a similar amount by your own operations. There is a good chance you reach that cash by operations.
So at that point, sitting on a huge debt is of no use. Checking your growth pace before taking financing decisions helps.
Cash needs –
It is always tempting to raise capital. To have surplus money than you actually may need. So it is important to remind yourself that there are harms too.
First, raising capital is expensive and complex. If an entrepreneur is not ready to handle this hassle, it can be disastrous. Second, due to unpreparedness, you may never know the ideal position of raising, which can make you raise too much. This can be a worst-case scenario. Third, remember raising deprives focus.
An entrepreneur’s main focus should be to provide value, anyhow. Raising money will get investors on board and this will take your arm and a leg. They might interfere with your vision too. So keeping these points in mind, you can set an ideal cash position for the company.
We get to know with this enlightening article that raising capital is complex. The best money way is still the bootstrapped way. It is considered the smoothest. But when it comes to hacking growth and scaling your product, a VC can do wonders. It can provide you with a primary boost or a launchpad for flying.
Nonetheless, that launchpad can also become the reason for your own perishment. Knowing how much you need, your burn rate of operations and the scale you want to achieve is crucial in setting a definitive goal for your fundraising. Having your vision and current situation intact in your head will go a long way in fixing this question.
It is strongly recommended that you go and take the path of organic growth. That is, growing your business naturally should be preferred. Before going on a run for chasing capital and Silicon Valley dreams. You might need the right advice, the right homework and just the right negotiations to get to an ideal position. This is not rocket science but it is nothing sort of less than that.
FAQ
How long should a seed round last?
A typical range seed round lasts between 12 and 18 months.
How much traction is enough for investors?
The “traction” that’s relevant for your current stage should be in the range of 0.1% to 0.5%.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by ImpactGuru.
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.
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.
“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.
ImpactGuru Logo
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.
Fundraising on ImpactGuru
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 PiyushJain.
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.
Impactguru founders – Khushboo Jain and Piyush Jain
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.
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:
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
April 2016
Pre-Seed Round
$500K
RB Investments Pvt Ltd (Singapore based VC Fund)
November 2017
Seed Round
–
Venture Catalysts
May 2018
Series A
$2Million
Apollo Hospitals Group, Currae Healthtech Fund, RB Investments, Shorooq Investments, Venture Catalysts with participation from various other investors from the USA, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East
December 2018
Series A
$2Million
Shorooq Partners
May 2020
Seed Round
–
Rajesh Mane
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 team with GlobalGiving
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.
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.
Lakshya Singh
