Company Name : Impact Guru
Funding Amount : $500,000
Investor(s) RB Investments, Fundnel
Funding Round : Seed round
Impact Guru, a Harvard Innovation Lab incubated fintech company has announced a seed round of $500,000 from RB Investments, a Singapore based venture capital firm, and Fundnel, a Southeast Asia-based private investment platform.
Impact Guru and Fundnel have also created a first in the world strategic partnership between a social/rewards crowdfunding platform and a private investment platform.
The capital raised will help to scale social/donation crowdfunding (online) for nonprofits, social enterprises and personal causes; and leverage Fundnel’s private investment network for facilitating equity or debt funding (offline) for startups and social enterprises in India and Southeast Asia.
Both Impact Guru and Fundnel will engage in the exchange and collaboration of relevant know-how in crowdfunding, technology and deal syndication.
The partnership with Fundnel will particularly help Impact Guru to extend its influence beyond India to attract more philanthropic and/or investment capital from NRIs (Non Resident Indians) / PIOs (Person of Indian Origin) abroad especially those residing in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, andIndonesia which are estimated to be 2.5mm.
The funds will also be utilized to expand Impact Guru’s core team, to accelerate product development and sales and marketing efforts.
Piyush Jain, Co-Founder and CEO of Impact Gurusaid, “The traditional charity and social enterprise fundraising model in India is broken. The alternatives to online fundraising are outdated, expensive, and ineffective. We firmly believe that a full stack crowdfunding solution that combines social, rewards, and investment crowdfunding will make Impact Guru a platform of choice for individuals, nonprofits, social enterprises, or startups for all their fundraising needs – be it small or large. RB Investments has a proven track record of helping its portfolio companies scale their businesses in India and Southeast Asia and has already backed several high profile startups. We are certain that RB Investments’ expertise and networks will help us accelerate our growth.”
Guru is a crowdfunding platform in the world that allows people to give to causes without making a direct financial contribution through its SMILE innovation.
