Platform Feature - Ketto

About the Platform

Ketto- Based out in Mumbai, Ketto is Asia’s most popular online crowd funding space for social, creative and personal causes. Founded in the year 2012 by Finance Wiz Varun Sheth along with Bollywood actor Kunal Kapoor and Tech gig Zaheer Adenwala, Ketto has raised over 150 crore till date.

Ketto’s primary objective is to use technology to optimise efficiency, reduce redundancy and increase impact targeting the social sector of country. We are working with grass-root level non-profits on technology enablement (including capacity building) to achieve our goals. Currently, Ketto campaigns are raising over Rs. 4 crore per month for various causes.

With a database of 5 lakh people and 10,000+ NGOs  Ketto has been - helping people pay for their life-saving surgeries, cheering them to chase their dreams and supporting NGOs as they make a difference to some of India's most pressing problems.

In its first year, Ketto raised INR 4.5 million for 18 campaigns. Ketto aims at creating awareness among the masses and support different projects providing a helping hand to the campaigners.  Right from Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachan to Noble prize winner Kailash Satyarthi, many notable personalities has used Ketto to raise funds for different causes. Further to that, brands like Viamcom18, Pune Super Giants (IPL Cricket team), Radio City 91.9, Yes Bank etc has associated with Ketto for for their CSR activities.

Ketto’s spokesperson Kunal Kapoor and Zaheer Adenwala were invited to Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for a summit. Last year, Ketto’s CEO Varun Sheth was featured in Forbes 30 under 30 for NGO’s and social causes.

Team

CEO & Founder- Varun Sheth

Varun Sheth is the Founder and CEO of Asia's largest crowdfunding website "Ketto". Having always been interested in the financial sector, he went on to do a couple of financial programs that included chartered financial analyst (CFA) and financial risk management (FRM).

Varun has extensively volunteered in the non-profit spaces back in college. He worked with NGOs such as The Akshara Foundation, Care India and he was also an alumnus of Dasra Social Impact. The experience helped him understand the functioning of NGOs better and realise the issues they experience. Ketto has done wonders under his leadership. Recently, he has been ranked as top entrepreneur in 2017 edition of Forbes Magazine, 30 under 30.
Varun is an intrepid traveler who in his spare time enjoys reading books over a cup of coffee and facing the cognitive challenge of new personal projects.

Co-Founder- Kunal Kapoor

Kunal Kapoor is a film and theater actor by profession achieving many successes till date including Rang De Basanti, Aja Nachle etc. He's also super clever and has a heart of pure, sunshiny gold which landed him into social work. Kapoor has endorsed popular brands like Thums Up, Indian Terrain, Ray-Ban, Mahindra Logan and Save the Children charity along with Gwyneth Paltrow.

In 2009, Kapoor started writing weekly columns for HT City, the lifestyle supplement of the Hindustan Times. These columns ended in November 2009 but still appear online on the social network Desimartini.

He is also a trained pilot, and rally car driver.In 2014, he started training for the Formula Three. Mostly, known to be a tech geek, he co-founded Asia's largest crowd funding platform called Ketto, which raises money for social and individual causes. Till date, the platform has raised close to 400 million rupees. He has also been a constant support to the Martyr Army Campaign called - “Support Soldier”

Co-Founder & CTO- Zaheer Adenwala

He is the high-tech Co-Founder and CTO of Ketto- Asia’s most visited crowdfunding platform. Being a mechanical engineer from Drexel University, Philadelphia, he moved back to Mumbai in 2008 and started his career as a Product Manager @ Affinity, a digital ad network. There he worked on multiple consumer facing properties as well as internal products. In 2011, he moved to Media.net which is one of India’s largest digital ad networks where he was heading a Product team. Most notable product built there was the Mobile ad suite that contributed 23% of the revenue within 1 year of launch.

In addition to that, he has worked on deploying an Affiliate Management system, CRM, and a host of internal products. Throughout his career, Zaheer has worked within multicultural environment, from a large company to a startup.

Zaheer has known Varun (CEO of Ketto) since his school days. The master of cool energy joined Ketto and its founding team in 2013. Ketto’s tech department rose to new heights under his guidance and leadership, often working after hours and hours with no breaks.

In his spare time, Zaheer is an intrepid traveller who enjoys reading books over a cup of coffee and facing the cognitive challenge of new personal projects.

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Whom do we cater to?

We don’t cater to any specific set of people, we look upto each and every one who is willing to donate towards a good cause. Because that’s what crowdfunding means.

What do we offer to our consumers?

The process is very simple anyone can come and raise money. They can do it through our official website by following the given steps. Or else, the people can also directly approach us through mail and phone calls; we have our managers always ready to help the campaigners out.

What motivated us to start up?

Quitting a well-paying job that you’re actually good at to do something completely new is scary. It was scarier because all my close friends and family seemed pretty skeptical about the idea of people giving money on an online platform. But I believed in the power and potential of the internet. I wanted to explore the possibilities it offers. I was super inspired by Vinod Khosla and his venture Impact Fund. I liked how he was willing to invest in a field that wasn’t explored much in India. One fine day, I decided to take that leap of faith and quit my job to start Ketto.

The idea behind Ketto is very simple-connect the people who have money with those who need money. We saw the challenges during raising Funds for any cause as it is very difficult as well time consuming. The founding team was later joined by Zaheer Adenwala.

What's in a name?

Ketto means “Key to Tomorrow”, which essentially signifies a platform that people can use to take a shot at bettering their tomorrow when it comes to funding and monetary help. With Ketto, I wish to give people a way to secure their tomorrow with help from their own people and the boon of social sharing that internet has given us by just reaching out to them at the right time from the right platform, with just a click of a button.

How do we see Social Media?

Social media is a beautiful, beautiful place. Humans of internet never cease to surprise us with the things they do – be it trolling a naive celebrity for being ‘politically incorrect’ or uniting a bunch of lost kids with their mother by tweeting about it. There’s one more magic that the social media pulls off and we of all get to witness it every now and then – it’s saving lives!

Currently we are

The journey so far has been very challenging but Ketto has created a unique bridge between the 100 million young Indian professionals who are online and internet savy and the 300 million people in India who don’t have access to basic social services such as education, healthcare, sanitation by using the access of NGO networks and providing these NGOs the necessary funds.

We have crossed different amazing milestone, though I believe we have a long way to go…

Our biggest challenge was

The concept of crowdfunding is still pretty new to India. Our biggest hurdle has always been lack of awareness about the possibilities and advantages of crowdfunding. Also online charity in India is a relatively new concept. It got originated in the year 2009 from the Western countries and got reception from the Indian audience in the year 2012. Also, doing something online, strikes a fear of data security breach among the donors. Rest, there are minor challenges like building trust on the receiving NGO, loss of personal touch, and many more.

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We want to dominate the world by

The plan for Ketto’s future is to make it a one-stop solution for every individual who is looking to give back. We intend to partner with large organizations and are looking at working with them to help channel their Corporate Social Responsibility funds in the right direction. We will apply the learning we get through campaigns to better the platform and make the concept of crowd funding more popular. So we’ve got plenty of ideas and partnership thoughts in the pipeline.

We’ve got love and support from over 5000 campaigners so far but we feel we’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg. There are so many people who still are skeptical about the idea of crowd funding and shy away from it. We want people to know that every time there’s a financial need, they know there’s a very easy, cost-efficient and a transparent platform they can go ahead with. I’ve always said we want to be like a Wal-Mart of crowd funding.

We’re making moolah by

Ketto's fee is just a 5 % cut off from the amount raised.

Our What The **** Moment

Well, we have many but our favourite one is when a small girl wanted to raise money to buy her favorite chocolate.

Industry as we foresee

As we can see that India is evolving digitally, the social media usage and reach is growing day by day. Social media has made our life easy, in a second things becomes viral.

In the upcoming year, social media will be considered one of the top platforms for promoting brands, seeking information’s, networking etc

Lastly, Are you hiring?

Definitely, we always look out for young passionate people who can take Ketto to another level.