KarmaCircles makes it easier for skilled professionals to give and receive advice for free. The platform allows anyone to be a mentor or a mentee depending upon the skills and knowledge. The mobile-first platform allows professionals to send a request for a meeting, schedule, interact and thank other professionals for helping through a KarmaNote. Anyone on the platform can be a giver or receiver of help – the platform fosters a give and receive culture. On the platform, a receiver can request for help with dignity and on the other hand, a giver can either politely decline or extend a helping hand based on their availability, expertise and preference. KarmaCircles also helps you build your online reputation based on the amount of help you give and you can leverage it whenever you need help yourself. To make it easier to understand, KarmaCircles issues Karma Points (a way to measure someone’s reputation on the KarmaCircles platform) and recalculates your Karma Network after every interaction.
In an interaction with BWDisrupt’s Sujata Sangwan, KarmaCircles’ team shares journey of their venture
USP: It allows any professional to receive help for free and to give help to build their online reputation. On this platform, there is no philosophy of a Mentor and Mentee, rather we say that anyone can be a Mentor or Mentee depending on the situation. That’s where we stand apart from our competitors. We are building Karma Network (new social graph) which is based on actual give and receive.
Journey: Deepak Goel, Founder, KarmaCircles came up with the idea of KC after helping more than a thousand startups over the last 6 years. None of those interactions were documented, even then it gave him lot of good Karma. These meetings translated in 4 angel investments, advisory equity from several startups, deep discounts on several products & services, and one co-founder position. So, we decided to build KC to make it easy for any professional in the world to share "Karma" and document those interactions.
It takes less than 10 seconds to sign up on KarmaCircles using Linkedin. Best is to sign up and try it out. We have apps on both iPhone and Android platform.
Several well-known entrepreneurs and investors are behind our vision and helping us with seed funding & advice. KarmaCircles has more than 5000 hand-picked members now and more than a thousand meetings have been documented via the platform. Several organizations such as TiE, WEE, YIC, SLP, GWN, etc have started using KC to run their mentoring programs.
Key points: This platform is being used in multiple scenarios:
• If there is a working professional in India who wants to apply at Harvard Business School and we have a good 30 people group on KC where the members are either Harvard Business School students or alumni’s. Aspirants in India can reach out the people in Harvard and ask about the whole application process even if they want to apply one year from now.
• Startups can reach out to advisors who have built multiple companies before
• Professionals are reaching out to various people on the platform if they are looking for a new job or if they want to discuss some good job opportunities.
• All these calls happen on skype, phone or in person and the duration can be from 30 minutes to one hour depending upon the time the giver wants to give.
Monetization: We are not focusing on monetization currently, but on growth. KarmaCircles is growing with a combination of two growth strategies: Enterprise Strategy which includes accelerators, business schools, and corporates and the Influencer Strategy which involves recognized personalities. Accelerators and Business Schools are the main target.
Market Size: There are 430+ million users on LinkedIn and all of them can benefit from KarmaCircles. After all, it is all about giving and receiving help. At KC, Anyone can be a giver or receiver of help – the platform fosters a give and receive culture.
