India's leading healthcare, nonprofit and personal cause donation crowdfunding platform ImpactGuru.com on Monday announced a Series A round of USD 2 million co-led by Apollo Hospitals Group and Venture Catalysts.
The capital raised will enable ImpactGuru.com to scale crowd-funding in India by ramping up sales and marketing as well as technology development including artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, and vernacular language support.
Healthcare crowd-funding is an alternative method of raising funds online for medical expenses, with the patient or his/her friends or family primarily relying on social media networks to mobilise donors to finance the relevant medical bills. Crowdfunding as a next generation financing method to pay for healthcare is particularly relevant for India's 25 crore strong middle class population as 80 percent of India's population doesn't have health insurance (NSSO), access to credit is limited, and the culture of generosity is increasing rapidly in India.
ImpactGuru.com will now be the preferred crowdfunding platform for all Apollo Hospital Group's patients nationwide effective immediately. Apollo Hospitals Group's strategic investment into ImpactGuru.com will help it to increase the level of awareness of crowdfunding as a solution to make healthcare affordable for all - particularly cancer, transplant, and pediatric cases.
Venture Catalysts, India's first integrated incubator, played an instrumental role in syndicating this round through its extensive network of angel investors and family offices in India, Southeast Asia, and Middle East.
Beyond facilitating the investment, Venture Catalysts is also assisting the startup in scaling its donor base and creating a culture of philanthropy within its investor network.
ImpactGuru.com has an exclusive strategic partnership with US and UK based GlobalGiving, the world's first and largest non-profit crowdfunding platform, and is the only crowdfunding platform in India that can offer tax benefits to international donors. Impact Guru and GlobalGiving together have raised Rs 105 crores / USD16mm so far for various social causes in India since their inception.
"The potential to use technology to crowdfund for help is limitless in the face of India's accelerating smartphone, internet, and digital payments penetration," said Piyush Jain, co-founder & CEO of ImpactGuru.com.
"We will also pioneer the matching of CSR funds from within the group as well other organizations from outside along with the generosity of the crowd, as we are determined that no one should be denied access to quality care," said Suneeta Reddy, MD of Apollo Hospitals.
"Crowdfunding to solve India's healthcare and nonprofit crisis is a disruptive innovation led by ImpactGuru.com. ImpactGuru.com has immense potential with banks / NBFCs unable to provide sufficient medical loans due to low credit scores, lack of collateral, high risk of death and default," said co-founder & president, Venture Catalysts, Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma.
Harsh Bothra, RB Investments, said, "Donation crowdfunding is a proven business model in US, UK, and China with platforms seeing exponential growth year on year. With this round of funding, ImpactGuru.com is well positioned to become the market leader in India."
"Through the power of crowdfunding, ImpactGuru.com has often mobilized Rs 25 lakhs for cancer or transplant surgeries in 48 hours. As India's healthcare out of pocket expenditure at ~60 percent is among the highest in the world, healthcare crowdfunding is a highly scalable solution given the low insurance penetration in our country," said founder, Currae Healthtech Fund, Apoorva Patni.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)