#DaanUtsav is India's festival of giving, celebrated from October 2 to 8, every year. The festival has become the biggest platform for philanthropy across India with many NGOs, corporates, schools, colleges, communities and celebrities looking forward to making it a bigger success. From CXOs to homemakers, vegetable vendors to designers and schoolchildren to company employees– this is a people’s movement to offer their time, skills, money, etc. for social good.
In an attempt to promote Daan Utsav, Vidit Aatrey, Co-Founder and CEO, Meesho shares the social commerce platform’s plan for Daan Utsav.
Here are the excerpts -
1. How is Meesho promoting Daan Utsav this year?
As a run-up to Daan Utsav, Meesho created an exclusive micro-donations collection of curated causes, called Helping Hands. Helping Hands hosts a number of campaigns dedicated to raising funds for flood relief, mid-day meals, health, education, causes for children, the elderly, women and more. Donation amounts start at as low as Rs.100, which ensures that all Indians can contribute through this segment. This category is accessible to 50,00,000+ Meesho resellers, who combined have unparalleled access to millions of customers/donors.
2. How will the donations category on the platform function?
As explained earlier, Meesho has an exclusive collection of causes listed on the app, with donation amounts starting at as low as Rs.100. Resellers can share these campaigns with their customer networks on WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and more. These customers directly pay the resellers, who pay this money to Meesho via the Meesho app. This amount is then sent to GiveIndia, who in turn takes a call on the allocation of the funds raised. Resellers and their customers/donors get regular updates from Meesho on how the funds donated by them are being used.
3. For what all causes, the donations raised would be used?
Campaigns on Meesho cover causes like health, education, food, shelter, holistic development for children, food and health for the elderly, women’s causes, flood relief, and more.
4. How are you ensuring meaningful expenditure of the donations?
Meesho is leveraging its 50,00,000+ network to raise donations for listed causes. Allocation of funds is done through GiveIndia.
5. How much are you expecting to raise during Daan Utsav?
As mentioned earlier, our network of 50,00,000+ resellers who are potential fundraisers, or who themselves could be possible donors. Because donation amounts are small, we expect many people to donate.
6. Do you have any future plan of promoting philanthropy on your platform?
We already have a dedicated donations category that will see increasing number of campaigns in the future. This is a permanent collection on the app. This combined with a rapidly scaling Meesho reseller network, will serve to offer an unparalleled scale to micro-donations.