By Robert O’Neill
When he was 13, Piyush Jain MPP 2013 visited an orphanage in Maharashtra. The experience was brief but transformative.
“I began to see that the life I had was not the norm for everyone—having parents, an education, food—these were all privileges I’d never questioned,” says Jain. “Once I realized that life is inherently unfair for so many, it pushed me to think about how I could be part of the solution rather than being just a silent observer.”
He resolved then and there to dedicate himself to combatting social injustice. The question was how. After receiving his undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, Jain worked as an investment banker in New York, London, and Hong Kong—but his early encounter with inequality haunted him. He came to HKS to “learn about public leadership and to figure out how I could play a meaningful role.”
His initial ambition was to pursue a career as a public servant. He says, though, that his time in Cambridge helped him appreciate that there were many paths to impact. “I realized that my skillsets in business, finance, and technology would be better suited for social entrepreneurship and venture building and decided to chart a new path accordingly.”
Ten years ago he founded CarePal Group, a company that has helped more than 250,000 Indians access health care through an innovative solution comprising crowdfunding, lending, and health protection and insurance solutions. It all began with Impact Guru, a crowdfunding platform he and his wife Khushboo Jain, an accomplished marketing executive, created to help nonprofits raise funds.
“It was a big struggle for the first two years,” Jain says. Then, in 2017, something happened.
“Over the last 10 years, we’ve focused on adding value to our customers by solving real problems, learning from them, and deepening our understanding of the health care financing landscape.”
A man spent years saving for his own kidney transplant—but when his daughter’s liver failed, he used every last rupee to save his child’s life. Left with nothing for his own surgery, he turned to Impact Guru for help—and in just one week, he raised the $10,000 he needed. “That’s when we realized that something truly incredible had happened on our platform—not just in terms of the pace of fundraising, but also in the sheer emotion it carried,” Jain says. “From that moment, Impact Guru pivoted into a health care crowdfunding platform.”
In a country where more than 60% of health care expenses are paid out of pocket—far above the global average of almost 20%—and where medical expenses force more than 25 million people into poverty each year, the need was acute. Today, Impact Guru is one pillar of CarePal Group, which includes CarePal Money, a medical lending marketplace that rapidly disburses loans at 0% or below market interest rates to patients, and CarePal Secure, a health protection and insurance marketplace that provides comprehensive coverage.
The company, which now employs more than 700 people, traces its origins to Jain’s HKS Policy Analysis Exercise. At the time, crowdfunding was just taking off, and Jain saw its potential to “have massive social impact. That’s what inspired me in the PAE exercise at HKS—to create a business plan for a crowdfunding venture.” He developed the idea further at Harvard Innovation Labs, the University’s business incubator, and continued to refine it even as he worked as a management consultant at BCG for the next couple of years. Eventually, he and his wife moved back to India and launched Impact Guru.
“Over the last 10 years, we’ve focused on adding value to our customers by solving real problems, learning from them, and deepening our understanding of the health care financing landscape. We’ve continually built, adapted, and customized our platform to meet evolving market needs—and as a result, we’ve been able to scale significantly.” As of this writing, Impact Guru has helped more than 55,000 patients receive lifesaving care, CarePal Money has disbursed over $8 million in loans at 0% interest, and CarePal Secure has provided protection solutions to more than 200,000 individuals.
“It’s been a phenomenal journey marked by many challenges and milestones,” says Jain. He is grateful for his time in Cambridge, which inspired him to travel his entrepreneurial path. “I’m deeply indebted to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the entire Harvard ecosystem for creating an atmosphere of encouragement—one that gives people the space to fail, to experiment, to connect, and to pursue their passions. Hopefully, this journey leads to the creation of an institution that can outlast my lifetime.”
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Portraits by Bethany Versoy