With 7.2 mn donors, Ketto aims to take crowdfunding to tier-2 and beyond

Fourteen years ago, fresh out of college with a finance degree and an ambition to create social impact, Varun Sheth faced what seemed like an impossible puzzle: how to merge the world of finance with meaningful social change. The solution emerged from observing a global trend that had yet to take root in India—crowdfunding.

Today, Ketto stands as one of India's largest crowdfunding platforms, with 7.2 million contributors and more than 300,000 fundraisers, having navigated multiple technological shifts and built a reputation in a sector where trust is paramount. 

Speaking to afaqs!, Sheth, who besides being a co-founder also operates as the company’s CEO, outlines the strategic decisions and market observations that shaped the company's growth from startup to household name.

The strategic foundation

Founded by Zaheer Adenwala (currently the COO of Ketto), actor Kunal Kapoor, and Varun Sheth, Ketto's launch in 2012 was deliberately timed to coincide with India's social media boom.

"Facebook had become super popular, and people were using social media to talk about impactful stuff—somebody needing help somewhere or somebody using social media to find a liver donor or getting blood support," Sheth explains.

The founders recognised that if social media could facilitate individual requests for help, a structured platform could scale this naturally occurring behaviour.

The decision to partner with Bollywood actor Kunal Kapoor as co-founder proved crucial for establishing credibility.

"In a society where there's so much mistrust, and especially in a category like crowdfunding, where it would be even higher, having somebody who's an established name in Bollywood really helped us put our name out there. It really helped us to get a lot of other celebrities who used our platform, who supported different programmes on the platform, and who spoke about it on social media," Sheth explains. 

This association provided what he refers to as "earned PR" during the crucial early years, a period he describes as extremely challenging and unfamiliar, involving the process of building out the platform, determining what strategies were effective or ineffective, and experimenting with various approaches just to manage daily operations.

Technology as a growth catalyst

The introduction of India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) marked a pivotal moment for Ketto's business model. Prior to UPI, online payments suffered from high failure rates and required users to have cards readily available—a significant barrier for spontaneous micro-donations.

"UPI changed the game completely. It made people get used to paying even five rupees online. So that basically became a big game changer."

UPI also brought in recurring transactions, so donors could sign up for monthly auto debit, which was really hard to do at the time. "Very few people had credit cards. So all this played a very pivotal role," Sheth observes.

But how do you communicate with potential donors?

Operating in an attention economy where users spend mere seconds evaluating content, Ketto has developed a focused approach to storytelling.

"You have five seconds of anyone's time when you're communicating with them," Sheth says. This constraint has shaped the platform's content strategy around around instant emotional impact while maintaining authenticity.

The platform relies almost entirely on user-generated content, with Ketto's role being amplification rather than creation.

"User-generated content is probably 99% of what we do because we are a platform where we're telling stories of people. It's not our story. We're just amplifying the story to a broader audience."

And, establishing credibility in crowdfunding requires what Sheth describes as "over-sharing information".

Rather than curating content to essential elements, Ketto provides comprehensive details about each campaign, allowing users to make informed decisions about authenticity and relevance.

"We ask campaigners to provide as much information as possible, even if it's not relevant. We've seen that just giving as much information as you have to the user and then letting the user decide what is relevant and not relevant works from a transparency standpoint," Sheth explains. 

He acknowledges the subjective nature of transparency, particularly for complex causes: "There's no benchmark for transparency. It's a very qualitative word. All causes are not binary. For someone's medical treatment, it's binary—it happened or did not happen. But when you're educating children, that cannot be binary."

This approach to trust-building is long-term by design. "It takes a decade, probably, to get there," Sheth notes, referring to the time required to establish genuine credibility in the market.

Marketing channel evolution

Ketto employs a multi-channel approach encompassing social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube), messaging (WhatsApp and SMS), email, and face-to-face engagement through partnerships with nonprofits and hospitals. However, Sheth notes a significant shift towards automated targeting.

"Over the last five or six years, targeting is best left to the big platforms. They know more about users than anybody else," he observes.

This evolution has simplified audience identification, allowing platforms' algorithms to handle optimisation rather than require manual demographic targeting.

WhatsApp has emerged as a particularly important channel. "WhatsApp has become very popular for business outreach. We believe the future is brands operating within WhatsApp itself, where people won't want to leave WhatsApp to engage with a separate app."

User demographics and regional patterns

Ketto's current user base reveals distinct patterns in digital philanthropic behaviour. Approximately 80% of transactions originate in tier-one cities—Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Hyderabad—indicating significant untapped potential in smaller urban centres.

The demographic breakdown shows 60% male and 40% female users, with 50% aged 18-27 and another 30% in the 27-37 age range. Notably, users over 40 remain largely absent from the platform, suggesting they continue to prefer traditional giving methods.

The platform has developed a segment of highly engaged users who make daily contributions. "We have users who transact every day, 365 days a year. They wake up, open the app, donate 50 rupees, and get on with their day," Sheth reports.

Addressing market challenges

When discussing compassion fatigue—the concern that exposure to constant appeals for help might desensitise users—Sheth takes a measured view. "Compassion never gets outdated. That's what differentiates humans from every other species," he argues.

The platform addresses the issue by accommodating different giving preferences. Some users prefer evaluating individual cases, whilst others opt for subscription-based giving to avoid decision fatigue whilst maintaining regular contributions.

Future outlook

Ketto's brand positioning focuses on three core elements: credibility, transparency, and accessibility. "We believe that everything else will keep coming and going, but these need to stand the test of time," Sheth explains.

Looking ahead, Sheth anticipates significant growth potential in tier-two and tier-three cities, drawing parallels with China's more distributed crowdfunding landscape. "In China, contributions come from over 250 cities. It's not an 80-20 game—it's very spread out in smaller cities as well. I believe India will move in that direction too," he explains. 

The platform is also witnessing a shift towards subscription-based giving, with users saying, "Rather than me coming and deciding every time, let me do a subscription so I'm participating on a month-to-month basis."