At SmilingStart people are always smiling, enterprising, dynamic makes the smiling atmosphere all around makes a compatible to the brand of 'SmilingStart'. Within each one resides a wish to do good and give back to the society. But their fast paced lives have made it difficult to commit time and resources towards a good cause. Hence they developed SmilingStart, a web-based platform which provides users an opportunity to contribute towards social causes with minimal effort and no cost.
SmilingStart is a venture of Thalia Technologies Private Limited, based out of Mumbai. A profit driven organization with an intense social objective. The profit motive encourages efficiency and innovation and the social motive brings satisfaction of contributing to the society. Strive to maximize every cent of investment and minimize expenses incurred in creating and delivering value.
INN came across to SmilingStart founder and thought leader Tejas Sangoi, a person-perfect identity with a 'craze' to provide a charity services for various social causes prevailed in our society. SmilingStart initiative is a brainchild of Tejas. A brilliant entrepreneur and a visioned management graduate in information technology, having thought provoking expertise combined with intelligent and award-winning ideas. A think tank of social initiatives. He shared his ideas and answered our questions in a free-wheeling interview. Excerpt:
INN: How do you get an idea to involve yourself in charity services?
TEJAS: In current times, the boundaries between the government, nonprofit, and business sectors are blurring. Dynamic for-profit organizations are emerging or expanding their services to solve social problems and also make money in the process. Creating a profitable business and delivering a positive social change is certainly possible. It is this thought that led me exploring to starting a social social initiatives. While I was researching on ways to use technology to integrate philanthropy or charitable giving in common day-to-day activities I realized that people want to do good, however their busy lives do not provide much opportunity to do so. A tool which could allow people to contribute to causes without much effort would be very useful. This led to the creating of SmilingStart.
What are your goals and acjievements till date?
SmilingStart is a very young startup. In this short span of one month, by signing up over 220 users without any marketing spend, SmilingStart has been able to garner considerable awareness about social causes. 736 mid-day meals have been fed, 380 days of education for underprivileged girls have been enabled and 540 days of shelter for street kids have been provided, with the funds raised on SmilingStart.com. With increase in user-base we aim to raise significant new funds for social causes and activate new supporters for them.
Why your concept is unique with other charity organizations?
At SmilingStart we do not ask people to donate money for charities. We empower individuals to donate to charities without spending any hard cash out of their pockets. All we ask the users is to set SmilingStart.com as their startpage and receive beautiful images every-day. In return we make donations to the charity organizations selected by the users. This is a unique concept and has never been done or tested in India or abroad before. Unlike other charity organizations, our business model is sustainable and supports high growth. SmilingStart is a profitable organization with an intense social objective. The profit motive encourages efficiency and innovation and the social motive brings satisfaction of contributing to the society. We strive to maximize every cent of investment and minimize expenses incurred in creating and delivering value.
How do you sustain in this competitive world?
We charge the brands for displaying ads on SmilingStart. 75% of the advertisement fees are donated to charitable causes selected by our users while we retain the remaining 25%. This revenue helps us cover our expenses, spread awareness and grow meaningfully. We believe this model will fulfill our mission of making a meaningful difference to the society and be sustainable at the same time.
Will you please give some hints of your 'creative ideas' on your 'modus operandi'?
David Ogilvy said “If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative”. So we are still in the process of finding out what sells for SmilingStart. We will be in a position to tell you only when we know. All we do right now is to strive to give people the best SmilingStart experience that they can ever have and motivate them to set us as their start pages.
Will you please explain your model 'wallpaper charity' concept?
It’s as simple as you termed it “Wallpaper Charity”. It’s a two step process Select a Charity to support and Set SmilingStart.com as your browser Startpage. Now, everytime you start the browse you receive a beautiful wallpaper background image on the startpage. The image could be a beautiful quote which inspires, a stunning photograph which amazes and do good. or a branded design sponsored by an advertiser. We charge the brands for displaying wallpapers on SmilingStart. 75% of the advertisement fees are donated to charitable causes selected by our users charities selected by users and 25% is retained by us to support our sustainable growth.
How do you fund the 'needy' with these campaigns?
As mentioned in my answer above, the advertising spends contribute to the charities selected by Smilingstart supporters. The funds reach to the specific causes listed with the charities partnered with SmilingStart.
What are your future plans?
In future, we plan to introduce exciting new features for the users which will allow them to develop, customize, send and receive beautiful personal images as startpage wallpapers. We are also working on optimizing SmilingStart for mobile browsers. Currently, we are restricted to users in India and in future we want to expand to international locations. There is a lot more in the pipeline, which will come up step by step.
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