Khushboo Jain

No textbook or prior work experience can truly equip what each day of your business has in store- Khusboo Jain

There are very few times that entrepreneurs are looking at the bigger picture while promoting or establishing a product or service. But, for Khushboo Jain, COO, ImpactGuru.com, it was important to add value to this big picture. Her vision to touch lives not only on a financial but also on an emotional level has made ImpactGuru.com the second largest crowdfunding platform in India.
She was recently featured amongst the top 15 winning women entrepreneurs at NITI Aayog and at United Nations, Women Transforming India Awards 2019. Khushboo’s background in fashion did not mean she couldn’t pursue her dream to give back to society.
Read her story to find out how a healthcare crowdfunding platform like ImpactGuru.com came about, her struggles to make it visible and how women like her are transforming the society, one funding at a time.

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    KJ

    Co-Founder Piyush and I coined the company's name as ‘ImpactGuru’ because of our firm belief that every individual independent of their financial capacity, can create a better world. An ImpactGuru is someone who envisions change, who finds solutions to social problems, who steps up to support another changemaker, who makes kindness a habit, who dares to follow his/her dream, or who simply helps out a friend in need. On our platform we have people that are donating as much as Rs 10 lakhs to as little as Rs. 1 to actually make a difference in somebody else’s life who is struggling to finance his/her medical bills. We at ImpactGuru are inspiring people to create a movement by using the power of internet, technology and social media.

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    KJ

    Prior to co-founding ImpactGuru.com, I worked as a fashion marketer for Valiram in Singapore, handling a brand portfolio that included Hackett, La Martina, and Jimmy Choo. I also worked with celebrity fashion designer Manish Malhotra in a fashion merchandising and buying role, and with actor/model/designer Malaika Arora Khan’s The Closet Label (now The Label Life). There came a point, my husband Piyush and I were keen on a business model that would let us add value and meaning to the community.  Setting up a crowdfunding platform catered to both our interests and agendas. After weeks of deliberation, I quit my job in 2014 and we started working on ImpactGuru. While Piyush was wrapping up his international work assignments, I single-handedly took up the role of strategy and operations of ImpactGuru.com.   The shift across industries might have altered external paradigms, but the nature of the work I do on a day-to-day hasn’t changed all that much. I used to sell opulent products, and now I sell a service. Nevertheless, the journey so far has been filled with learnings. No textbook or prior work experience can truly equip what each day of your business has in store. There are always several thoughts running through my mind – from the performance of each fundraiser on ImpactGuru, to making sure the platform is running smoothly to ensuring that we recruit and train the best talent and keep them motivated all at the same time. At the end of the day, I go back home each day with a sense of fulfilment of having saved or at least changed many lives. The strong passion to make a difference in the lives of people and the persistence to achieve our mission to save more lives continues to keep me going.

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    KJ

    Internet entrepreneurship is tough. We had few customers some years back. Piyush and I were seriously considering closing the venture due to the fear of failure. We were glad we didn’t. Our advisors who told us to be patient. The initial focus of ImpactGuru.com was to raise funds for nonprofits. After being in business for about 18 months, we realized that while we would want to continue serving nonprofits, there was an even bigger opportunity helping patients raise money for their out of pocket hospital expenses. We thus pivoted towards making healthcare as our main focus area. We started pitching to investors and raised Rs 3.3 crores from a Venture Capital fund. We raised investment funding on CNBC TV18’s Young Turks live! and the business turned around. Today, we are regarded among the top two players in India.

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    KJ

    Often, we are so busy managing different functions within the business that we forget to take a pause and realize the impact of all the work that we are actually doing. One such moment that comes to mind was when I went to meet one of the campaigners Amit Shenoy and his wife Gopi in the hospital. I just wanted to meet them to share my good wishes and understand how their experience of fundraising was. When I met them, that’s when I realized that we are actually saving lives. I literally saw tears in their eyes. There was so much gratitude towards the kind of work that we did. It was quite heart-warming. It is in moments like these that help you work harder especially during a down period, when you feel caught up and you have hit the wall. Moments like these really help you push through, work harder and create all the impact that you have created. Felt so good after meeting them that I have decided to go and meet patients and individuals who are crowdfunding on our platform whether they have raised funds successfully or not. What you realize is that you’re not only helping them financially, but there is a lot of emotional and moral support that you give the campaigners.

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    KJ

    We are happy to share, the core management team at ImpactGuru consists of 40% women leaders. It's heart-warming to see the objective of equality realised at every step in the company, right from the top to the lower management. In 2018, a few of our women employees ran a fundraiser on ImpactGuru for Wildlife SOS. The initiative raised Rs. 1.30 lakhs within a month to rescue and rehabilitate tortured elephants. On another note, in 2016, ImpactGuru partnered with the Singapore Committee of UN Women to carry out Project Inspire which aimed at empowering women through safety and security initiatives by hosting a crowdfunding contest. Organisations from across 12 countries panning Asia Pacific participated to raise more than Rs. 24 Lakhs within a month. ImpactGuru did not charge any platform fee to show our solidarity towards this cause.

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    KJ

    Piyush and I believe the only way to sustain for a longer period of time is to take adequate breaks to unwind and to have a good work life balance. Traveling, movies, music, makes us hit the Pause button and helps us lower the stress levels.

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    KJ

    The ImpactGuru team is driven with the intent to make healthcare accessible to all and save more lives. In terms of markets we want to be strongly focused in India but we are looking opportunistically in other markets specifically Middle East because of some recent investments in the company from various investors. Our focus is to be strongly focused on healthcare crowdfunding which is a proven concept in the US, UK as well as China. We want to be Asia’s largest healthcare crowdfunding platform excluding China.

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    KJ

    This can apply to a promotion or a potential client. Projecting confidence is necessary because without it your stand can seem very shaky. If you can back your proposal up with reasons, which could be as to why you deserve that promotion, or why your organization is the perfect fit for the client, then there is very little which can prevent you from getting what you want.

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