EXCLUSIVE - Bollywood actor Kunal Kapoor talks about Ketto, his crowdfunding startup which has raised Rs 40 Cr for social causes
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Ketto is an online fundraising website to raise funds for social(NGOs/Non-Profits/Charities), creative(Movies/Music/Theatre/Fashion/Technology) and personal(Health/Education/Travel) causes from a large number of people who share your passion or concern.
Ketto, founded in 2012 by Varun Sheth, Zaheer Adenwala and
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Here are the excerpts:
Q. What is the kind of work Ketto is doing?
Kunal: At Ketto, we believe that a change in mindset is the first step towards solving a problem. Over the past 4.5 years, we have raised over 40 crores for different causes. People are catching up with the idea of crowd funding. Ketto is a reward based platform where if you support a tech company, you get the product as reward and if its a social cause then usually your reward is just the gratification of helping someone out and so on. There is no equity or stake.
Q. How does crowdfunding help start-ups?
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Kunal: Crowd funding is great for start-ups. It is basically democratisation of capital in a world where very few people control the money. When someone has a great idea, they can ask people to validate it by contributing whatever they can. On Ketto, a bunch of start-ups have raised money and also gone ahead and raised money from VCs and investors because crowd funding is a validation of the fact that their product was viable.Q3. From acting to running a business; why did you chose to start Ketto?
Kunal: I’ve always wanted to run a business which was ethical which not only made profits but also gave back to the society. I found crowd funding fascinating while I was working in the social space with NGOs, I found the cost of raising money for causes was very high, going upto 401-50% which I thought was very unfair.The maximum amount of money should go to the cause.