EXCLUSIVE - Bollywood actor Kunal Kapoor talks about Ketto, his crowdfunding startup which has raised Rs 40 Cr for social causes

Kunal Kapoor is a famous Bollywood personality known for his work in Cinema but few know of his brilliant work in the ubiquitous crowd funding- for- causes platform, Ketto.

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 Kunal Kapoor, is engaged in the business of crowd-funding, which requires raising small sums of money from large numbers of people to achieve a common goal.

Business Insider caught up with the charming actor in Bengaluru where he was launching the ‘MCBC’ campaign (Men Countering Breast Cancer) is spearheaded by men to generate awareness and conversations around breast cancer and most importantly to encourage women to get checked early. As a part of the campaign, Ketto and JUMPINGGOOSE® have launched a range of branded T shirts for men exclusively available on Amazon Fashion.

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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?

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?
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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.