Actor Kunal Kapoor raises 45 lakh through crowd-sourcing

KOLKATA: Bollywood actor Kunal Kapoor has supported a crowd-funding portal Ketto and helped them to raise more than Rs 45 lakh in the last one year.

The portal fights for causes like rehabilitating a sex-worker's daughter and sponsoring a poor athlete for the Winter Olympics.

"A lot of people want to give back to society these days and the one of best ways to do it is through technology," Kapoor, 36, told reporters here.

Crowd sourcing is the practice of obtaining funds through contributions from a large group of people and especially from online communities.

Through the crowd-funding platform, the actor said, he was proud to have recently raised Rs 10 lakh to sponsor equipment for athlete Shiva Keshavan so that he could participate in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia this month.

The portal crowd-financed the US trip of a sex-worker's daughter so she could get a scholarship for higher education.

Varun Sheth, his partner in Ketto told PTI that in the last one year of operations over Rs 45 lakh for 18 social causes related to education, children and women's empowerment were raised.

"Kunal uses his public image as an actor to attract funds. He looks after the marketing aspect and gets corporate support for us. He is also like a brand ambassador," Seth said.

Together, their goal was to create an online community of donors and get the youth actively involved in supporting social causes.

Ketto provided a platform to NGOs looking for funds to support charitable projects.

They were in Kolkata recently to raise funds for underprivileged children over a charity dinner week.