Purpose Before Profit: Mayukh Choudhury Of Milaap On The Benefits Of Running A Purpose-Driven Business
An Interview With Chad Silverstein
Ambition
We need to respect and support ambition of team members, if we expect them to deliver the best. A few will stay for long, a few only for a couple of years. Our culture is to ensure that everyone looks back at one’s stint in Milaap as the brightest spot of their profession careers, probably a decade or two down the line. That is what we strive for!
In today’s competitive business landscape, the race for profits often takes center stage. However, there are some leaders who also prioritize a mission-driven purpose. They use their business to make a positive social impact and recognize that success isn’t only about making money. In this interview series, we are talking with some of these distinct leaders and I had the pleasure of Mayukh Choudhury, Co-Founder- Milaap.
A B.Tech. from IIT Madras, Mayukh is the Co-founder and CEO of Milaap. At Milaap he focuses on firm’s business and product strategy.
Prior to Milaap he was with Sohan Lal Commodity where he managed an initial fund-raising of USD 8M and subsequent round of USD 25 M for capitalization of the company. He has been part of Ernst and Young and D. light design. D.light design is a social start-up on affordable solar lighting solutions and Mayukh was responsible for setting up distribution channels and financing partnerships across India.
All these experiences resulted in Mayukh and his partners creating what is now India’s leading crowdfunding platform to raise funds for social and personal causes. Besides his interest in Physics and Mathematics and passion for Entrepreneurship, Mayukh also enjoys photography, sketching, surfing besides work.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us your “Origin Story”? Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
My days of childhood would be a journey to the far-eastern corner of India, along the bordering region of Myanmar. My mother, a teacher by profession, was instrumental to those years of shaping up an interest in literature and mathematics. Opportunities back home were scarce, and my entire childhood was spent with an ambition to get out of the place. That took me to an engineering bachelors from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, followed by a business degree from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
If I must make this tough choice, I think it’ll be the decision to give up our fee-for-service model to a completely voluntary user tipping revenue mode. This was 2020, when the entire world was reeling under the brunt of COVID, and India had to impose one of the most stringent lockdowns. It was apparent that such a lockdown would lead to distress among many, and the entire country rallied together to help each-other. We were running fundraisers, managing the sudden transition to work-from-home, and just going crazy!
Right from our inception, we never charged fees for disaster related campaigns, like flood relief. This time as well we did not. However, the entire focus of Milaap for month was only on COVID relief. The fundraising volume was crazy, but having no revenues were a massive concern.
That was when a couple of donors wrote to us, sharing similar concerns, and just out of their sheer generosity donated voluntarily to Milaap. An act that triggered a chain of ideas, intense debates, and probably an outrageous decision of removing all our fees, and just moving to a voluntary tipping model. Voluntary tips, in India, was just suicidal! I still remember assuring a few of our concerned team members that should the three-month experiment go wrong, we still could go six more months, and probably that would be just enough for them to find an alternative.
Partly driven by belief, partly by audacity, on Aug 14, the eve of Indian Independence Day, we launched our three-month tipping experiment. That “experiment” goes on, until today, and will forever! We shall gladly cease to exist should users find no value in what we do and stop their voluntary tips to us.
Four years hence, I feel lucky to have had a team that was indeed crazy enough to believe, and to have done that close to a decade of the company, probably made it even more unbelievable!
We often learn the most from our mistakes. Can you share one that you made that turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons you’ve learned?
Lesson :“listen to users!”
We started our journey as a crowdfunding platform for rural causes. We were high on purpose, and stubborn on the mission. For three years we kept the platform restricted only to rural causes. We no doubt did great work in a few aspects, but we were just going anywhere as a business.
We eventually opened the platform for all clauses out of desperation to find something, finally asking the question “let us find out how users will find maximum value from what we have built’. It took just a few months for the first big medical fundraisers, a heart transplant, that defined our entire journey. I have written about that story in detail later on here.
As medical emergencies drove fundraisers on Milaap, and our donor base grew, we have eventually been able to drive far greater impact on rural causes as well, than we could have ever done had we been obstinate on the causes we allowed on the platform.
As a successful leader, it’s clear that you uphold strong core values. I’m curious what are the most important principles you firmly stand by and refuse to compromise on. Can you share a few of them and explain why they hold such significance for you in your work and life?
Honesty and persistence will always win the long marathon! I cannot speak for the short dashes, but those two will always rule. It has taken a long time for me to understand that, and I must admit that I have not always followed the path. However, I have enough lessons to believe that this is the only way to move forward through uncertainties.
Uncertainties are stressful, and any entrepreneur is bound have a significantly higher share of those than the rest. It is quite easy to say that the stress is what leads to potential rewards, a whole together different story to implement day in and day out. Perplexities of decision making can just be crushing.
In those circumstances, when every path is uncertain, every advice has a conflicting counter advice, one is crippled without a north-star. I just choose the path that’s closest to honesty and persistence, those are my pliers to meander through the barbed wire trenches of uncertainty.
What inspired you to start a purpose-driven business rather than a traditional for-profit enterprise? Can you share a personal story or experience that led you to prioritize social impact in your business?
I would attribute that decision to a phase of life and proximity to like-minded mission driven people. I was in a consulting role in Dubai after my education. I left one day just to explore rural India working on several stints like solar lanterns, agricultural financing. Anoj, then a student at the National University of Singapore, was inspired by microfinance and took a year’s sabbatical to be at the grassroots.
We met at that juncture, connected on the problem of scarcity of money for rural households and businesses, and that’s how Milaap started — a platform to crowdfund for rural causes. We just thought it would be a good experience for a couple of years! Little did I imagine that, thirteen years on, I would be writing this piece about Milaap sitting in a laid back café in Long Beach!
Can you help articulate a few of the benefits of leading a purpose-driven business rather than a standard “plain vanilla” business? How has your company’s mission or purpose affected its overall success? Can you explain the methods or metrics you use to evaluate the impact of this purpose-driven strategy on your organization?
The very fact that we survive, and thrive, because of generous voluntary tipping by our users, defines how we are at the core. We exist to serve a purpose for our users, who choose to use Milaap at some of the most distressing phase of their lives. Therefore, we are everything about customer-service and ensuring sanctity of the platform. In terms of metrics, the former transpires directly into our core revenues, and the latter into how robust our tech, people, and processes are to detect and weed out unscrupulous players from the platform. It does give me immense pride is saying that our mission, and impact, is intertwined directly into our revenues as a platform. We thrive when our users find a value in what we do, we are punished when we falter!
Can you share a pivotal moment when you realized that leading your purpose-driven company was actually making a significant impact? Can you share a specific example or story that deeply resonated with you personally?
This would be the first major medical fundraiser on Milaap, in 2014. A good three years in the platform we were trying to find the real use-case trying every cause, connecting with grassroot organizations etc. One day we see a fundraiser by a group, probably in their late 20s, to crowdfund the cost of heart-transplant for one of their friends. Heart transplants were almost unheard of, leave along seeing a fundraiser on Milaap for that. That group took social media by a storm, and to the awe of our entire team, crowdfunded the entire amount in seven days, and in quick time ensured that the transplant went through. When all this was done, one of them wrote a heartfelt note of gratitude for us.
That note was a defining point for the entire team, and the Eureka moment for me! It was right there! We have seen, throughout our childhood, neighbors, friends, family, colleagues help-each other in medical emergencies. All we had to do in Milaap was to make that very act fast, easy, and transparent. Our purpose was neither to create a behavior, nor to change everything around us. We just had to amplify the good that existed, with honesty, with persistence, day-after-day, year-after-year! We have done just that ever since.
Have you ever faced a situation where your commitment to your purpose and creating a positive social impact clashed with the profitability in your business? Have you ever been challenged by anyone on your team or have to make a tough decision that had a significant impact on finances? If so, how did you address and reconcile this conflict?
Yes! This will take us back to 2020 during the first wave of COVID crisis. I have mentioned about this but will summarize here again. We never charged our fees for fundraisers related to disaster relief, and we adhered to that principle in the COVID crisis as well. However, when almost entire fundraising, in the months of April 2020 to July 2020, were for COVID relief, the company practically was running dry without revenues.
We addressed it with the most audacious step that we have taken as a company. That relentless adherence to principles was the defining point for us to move to a voluntary tipping model. We just innovated our way out of that apparent dilemma between finances and principles, and graciously adopted the path to let the crowd decide how much they valued us.
What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs who wish to start a purpose-driven business?
Survive first! We can do good only when survive, and more of good when we thrive. I firmly believe that a business carried out with honesty, will etch its own impact story along the way.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Purpose-Driven Business.” If you can, please share a story or example for each.
1 . Empathy
Our team is allowed to spend any amount of time discussing with our campaign organizers, irrespective. There is no mandated time limit. We take it as an honor that people allow us to share a journey at some of the most distressing times of their lives, something that we do only with the people closest to us. We appreciate that in such times of medical distress, sometimes people just want to talk. We feel proud when our team does that.
2 . Discipline
When people raise money for medical emergencies, they might need it in a matter of days for a critical medication or surgery. We not only have to coordinate and ensure that the campaign organizer gets all support in outreach, but also complete all verifications. That takes discipline, sticking to timelines, to protocols, and being alert 100% of the time.
3 . Ambition
We need to respect and support ambition of team members, if we expect them to deliver the best. A few will stay for long, a few only for a couple of years. Our culture is to ensure that everyone looks back at one’s stint in Milaap as the brightest spot of their profession careers, probably a decade or two down the line. That is what we strive for!
4 .Business first
We have to survive as a business. We have taken tough decisions to align costs with business volumes. Team members had to move on. We did not dither there, but I am happy to say that we were always early to such adjustments, allowing enough time for people to find their way out. Empathy for the team is equally important.
5 . It is all about users
Around 2014, when sticking to only rural causes was not delivering the growth, the best decision that we took was to open up the platform for all causes and observe how users find value. We discovered the real use-case of crowdfunding for medical emergencies, and also ended up creating a far bigger impact for future rural causes along the way.
I’m interested in how you instill a strong sense of connection with your team. How do you nurture a culture where everyone feels connected to your mission? Could you share an example or story that showcases how your purpose has positively influenced or motivated people on your team to contribute?
We respect the individual, their ambitions, and acknowledge that if we expect a team member to do their best, we also need to do our best to define their goals and careers. We do not hesitate to ask, “What is Milaap giving the individual, so that they can look back a decade down the line and be proud of being a part of this journey!”. This is the single-most important thread that binds us as a team.
Since Anoj and I, as founders, have stepped out of our full-time day-to-day responsibilities, the business and operations of Milaap is managed by our college Manya Sharma. Manya’s journey with us, right out of her college to all the way leading the company is inspiring. Manya started in user engagement, moved to product management, learned data sciences, took over sales, and today leads the entire business. I am incredibly proud of this journey, and we made it work with a deep mutual understanding. At every stage, Manya acknowledged what the company needed from her, and we reciprocated by supporting her ambition and interests — allowing her to choose roles, experiment, learn and grow. Anoj and I are confident that the next decade of Milaap is truly in safe hands.
Imagine we’re sitting down together two years from now, looking back at your company’s last 24 months. What specific accomplishments would have to happen for you to be happy with your progress?
Milaap is a known name in India today, a go-to-platform to raise funds for causes. Our 320,000 supporters in the United States have played pivotal role in this journey so far; many of them generously giving back their people and communities. All of these through word-of-mouth. We think this is the right time to connect deeper with our donors outside of India, starting with the United States. We are augmenting this outreach with ways to make it easy residents of the USA to donate via Milaap. They can now donate via their Donor Advised Funds, nudge their companies to match the donations, all at the click of a button.
Two years down the line, I would love to see a culmination of these efforts establish Milaap as the gateway to India for doing good!
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Probably the best way to change the world, is not by trying to change it, but by trying to amplify the good that already exists in the world! The collective, the people, have incredible power. Our work as purpose-driven-businesses is to make it easy for that collective to act and express. And, of course, survive!
How can our readers further follow your work or your company online?
Our website is www.milaap.org. We are on social media: Facebook — , Instagram — , X (twitter) — .
This was great. Thanks for taking time for us to learn more about you and your business. We wish you continued success!
About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein, a seasoned entrepreneur with over two decades of experience as the Founder and CEO of multiple companies. He launched Choice Recovery, Inc., a healthcare collection agency, while going to The Ohio State University, His team earned national recognition, twice being ranked as the #1 business to work for in Central Ohio. In 2018, Chad launched [re]start, a career development platform connecting thousands of individuals in collections with meaningful employment opportunities, He sold Choice Recovery on his 25th anniversary and in 2023, sold the majority interest in [re]start so he can focus his transition to Built to Lead as an Executive Leadership Coach. Learn more at www.chadsilverstein.com
Purpose Before Profit: Mayukh Choudhury Of Milaap On The Benefits Of Running A Purpose-Driven… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.