AI has helped us look at campaigns that are successful or have failed: Kunal Kapoor
Actor Kunal Kapoor, one of the first ones to start crowdfunding platform ‘Ketto’ for social and individual causes, was engaged by Jwala Kumar, VP - Monetisation and Strategic Partnerships, Explurger, in a fireside chat on ‘The Role of Community and Social Networks In Crowdfunding Success’ at the tird edition of DATAMATIXX Asia Summit and Awards 2024.
At the outset, Kunal Kapoor highlighted the power of communities and the importance of storytelling.
Jwala Kumar started the discussions by asking Kapoor how he was using AI and data analytics, and how they were impacting the donor campaigns.
To this, Kapoor responded by saying, “Right from the inception, the idea behind Ketto was to build something that was very transparent and easy to use. We felt that there was a gap there when it came to social funding. There were a lot of people who were doing social funding, but they were not using the technology effectively and it wasn’t transparent, which meant that you didn’t really know how the money was being raised and where it was going. So, the idea really was to use technology effectively, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”
Elaborating further, Kapoor said that AI obviously has played a really important part. “I think what AI has done is two-fold. One is that it has given us a chance to look at all the campaigns that have been successful and campaigns that have failed, and to get some kind of pattern that emerges from them and to study that and to understand that. The other thing, of course, is to increase donor interaction and to tailor campaigns for those particular donors. AI has obviously been very effective there as well. You are studying data in real time and you adjust your strategies depending on what the data is giving you. That has been very important. Another thing that has been important with data and ML is that it has helped us to put a system in place, where if there are any anomalies in a campaign, fraud detection becomes far more effective. Technology obviously has played a really important part on our platform.”
When asked about what role community and social networks play in crowdfunding, Kapoor replied, “I think community and social networks are the foundation of any crowdfunding campaign, because in today’s world what’s really important is distribution, and communities and social networks help you with distribution. They help you to get credibility and reach out to new people, whom you may not have been able to reach out earlier. We started Ketto in 2012, and for the first few years we didn’t have enough money for any kind of marketing. But the company was growing organically, and that was only because of the community and social networks. It was not only growing organically in India, but a lot of our donors were people from outside India, countries that you would not imagine would want to donate to campaigns in India. All those people were being reached out because of community and social networks. It really is the foundation of any kind of campaign and any kind of distribution. The word itself is key to tomorrow, and I can see it’s huge.”
Speaking about the power of storytelling, Kapoor said that storytelling is the most important thing in building community and social networks. However, it is often underestimated. “When you are building a company, you’re looking to disrupt something. So, you have to be able to tell an effective story. It’s very important to be very clear in your communication about who you are, what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it. Secondly, I think it’s got to be emotionally engaging, because we live in a world where we’re constantly bombarded with so much stuff, most of which goes unnoticed. But if something is emotionally engaging, it attracts your attention. Thirdly, I think it’s very important that the communication is authentic and personal. We found a lot of campaigns that we felt people should have helped, but the communication was very generic and it didn’t reach out to people. Another important factor is constant engagement with the community and social network, because sometimes people go silent and then the community sort of falls apart.”
These are edited excerpts. For the complete address, please watch below:
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