MyPoolin enables you to pool money online in the easiest and fastest manner possible be it for any purpose. This is the primary focus of their product but once they scratched the surface an inch beneath this, they realised that the money pooled in together could be put to a number of good uses which brings about transformation at a number of levels and scale. When people pool in their resources together and more importantly, are driven by a strong sense of purpose and community, magic happens.
Two out of many examples starting with Gods own land - Kerala. A Chit fund is a kind of savings scheme practiced in India. To quote the know-it-all-wikipedia –
Chit funds also played an important role in the financial development of people of south Indian state of Kerala, by providing easier access to credit. In Kerala, chitty (chit fund) is a common phenomenon practiced by all sections of the society. A company named Kerala State Financial Enterprise exists under the Kerala State Government, whose main business activity is the chitty.
In one form or another, it has been practised for ages across the world. Its called Tanda in Latin America, Cundinas in Mexico and some more names in the Central America!
It just validates their core need to come together as a community for mutual benefit, something that has been prevalent for ages and something that we saw recently with Modis Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign) when a group of residents in Delhis New Palam Vihar as per a Times of India report, got together to pool in money to set up dustbins in their locality. At the time when people are much more connected than ever with social networks and messaging apps, it takes just a strong desire to set things in motion. The same spirit is shown for not just ones own community but others as well as recently people pooled in donations at massive scale for Jammu and Kashmir flood victims.
This human behaviour is never going to change, but what will change is the manner in which we get together, from a village Chaupal to a Whatsapp application, from collecting money in a jhola to an application like MyPoolin.
The launch story
They say You are born alone and die alone but in-between these two states of life, we engage day in and day out with many people in different settings, across different mediums to be rightfully termed ‘social creatures’.
On this path between the two extremes, it is not about what they are doing rather who they are doing it with, that makes their experience enjoyable. Whether at school, college, office, club or in a locality, on various occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, farewells, parties, housewarming, baby showers, weddings to activities like attending movies, events and so on, we like doing things in a group making our experiences more social.
In most of these cases, money is an inherent part to avail services and products we wish to consume as a group or gift to someone. In India, we have been pooling money since ages for temple donations to festivals and continue doing so every day for various reasons including the common parties, picnics and more.
Still, one of the less talked about things that arises often in most of these cases is something we call Money Pooling Paradox. To make our experiences social and enjoyable, they pool in money where usually, a single person in the group would take the lead, collecting money from all and accounting the money flow. This often leads to uncomfortable You owe me situations where one person chases others for their share.
The paradox stems from the fact that we need money for activities to be carried out, where on one hand we have the goal of forging social ties but on the other hand, chasing folks for their share makes one uncomfortable about it and leads to social awkwardness which in turn, many times stops us from going ahead with that group activity, whatever it may be, due to lack of initiative. We all have been there and the worst part is, we dont admit it.
Paradox aside, tabulating all payees on mundane, non-automated spreadsheets, painstakingly updating them and the nightmarish net-banking with never ending digits ranging from account number to IFSC to MICR to card block and what not codes and imagine registering 15 net banking payees, this was a perfect recipe for something that has been too much of a hassle and was not something to look forward to.
Commerce Labs, have solved the problem for group-gifting, group travel and crowd funding with our partner sites and they felt the need to be addressed is much larger and in order to touch millions of people and their groups, they are launching our platform MyPoolin to make the journey between two extremes much more delightful with and for the ones, they care about.
Launching soon!
Sign up now on www.mypoolin.com