Achieved 28% more revenue and 12% more customer base in 5 months using innovative storytelling and pricing models
In tulips, a B2C social crowdfunding platform
Disclaimer: I've kept the organisation name redacted as "Tulip". I genuinely don't want people messing with an ecosystem that's running thousands of active emergency fundraisers.
What is Tulip?
Tulip is an online crowdfunding platform where people in crisis can ask for help and donors from across the world show up for them. It runs fundraisers across medical emergencies, education, and 20+ other causes. People donate, campaigns get visibility, beneficiaries receive funds - the engine already works.
From Tulips own data
- •1800+ active campaigns
- •20 fundraising categories
- •Tech stack: RoR, React
Why This Case Matters
Donation is such a strange behaviour if you think about it. You give away your money and expect nothing in return. No product. No service. Just faith.
In India, this behaviour is tied deeply to culture - Dana, Zakat, charity, religious duty, morality, empathy, family values. All of it mixes together and forms this unique psychology of giving.
Tulip is one of the only organisations that managed to get this right at scale in urban India. More than 96% of campaigns and donations came from Tier-1 and urban markets.
Big Audacious Goals
Expand into Tier 2, 3, and rural Karnataka, and eventually across India.
*Goal formalised during half year planning
- •Target: 5% increase in market share
- •Target: 10% increase in revenue
- •Timeline: H1
Now State (When we began)
The existing workflow presented (in the form of UML) below worked beautifully for urban areas
Fundraiser user flow
Register → setup profile → add beneficiary details → add case information → upload documents → choose promotion options → set withdrawal options
Donor user flow
Find campaign → donate → get receipt
This engine produced
92% of Tulip's entire revenue
The remaining 8% came from offline fundraising teams operating in big cities.
The question was simple but bold:
Will all this work as-is in rural markets?
Or will people behave differently?
We needed to understand the gaps, the motivations, the cultural layer, and what variations were mandatory.
Research Studies
1. Scope
Karnataka tier 2, 3, and rural
Study location
13 core team members & off-shore supporters
Team
Mixed (Qualitative & Quantitative)
Data
Statistical & Thematic
Analysis
40 days
Duration
2. Hypotheses
"Donation behaviour in urban areas of Karnataka is more significant than rural areas"
Donation behaviour in urban and rural areas of Karnataka is same
Null hypothesis
Independent: Residential
Dependent: Donation behaviour
Variables
3. Secondary data report
4. SPEAR (Set objective, Prepare, Execute, Analyse, and Report) Framework
What These Insights Triggered Internally...
This is the part I love the most - the empathy shift...
The entire product, design, and CX team started speaking from the user's perspective. We even started referring to personas with names like "Arun," the statistical persona representative.
A new user journey began to emerge
The MVP That Changed The Game
QAS (Q&A based storytelling came out of 3 signals)
Audio-to-text converters didn't work well for most people.
Story writing felt emotionally heavy and intimidating.
Rural audiences responded strongly to "guided narration".
This is how we built it...
So we built an interface where fundraisers answer a series of questions.
The system ties the answers into a coherent narrative automatically.
I'm Arun Kumar (Ask in the story), raising funds for my Father (From step 1) who is a retired Canara bank employee (Ask in the story)
He makes his livelihood with a pension of Rs. 2,900.00 (Ask in the story) & is the primary caretaker (Ask in the story) of the family
The 5 (Ask in the story) of us live as a family in shimogga (From step 1)
My father has been suffering from Lung cancer (From step 2) for more than 2 years (Ask in the story). He is undergoing chemotherapy (Ask in the story) in Apollo hospital Bangalore (From step 2). Up until now, we've spent more than 2 Lakhs (Ask in the story) - assisted from savings & loans from family & friends. (Ask in the story)
To continue his treatment we need 2,00,000.00 (From Step 2) more in the next 15 days (From step 2). Please help us
What happened after launch
In 4 months duration
1. Total number of fundraisers increased by 21%. And rural areas contributed upto 19% of these
2. Reduced drop-offs: Drop-off rate came down to <30%
3. Combine with tipping model, revenue jumped by 35%.
This happened: Tulip stopped charging fundraisers → With better stories → more trust → more donations → more tips
Learnings
Rural markets don't need "lite versions" - they need culturally resonant versions
Storytelling is not a writing problem, it's a structure problem.
Behaviour > demographics when it comes to product expansion
Cross-functional empathy accelerates innovation more than individual creativity.
Great revenue outcomes often hide behind human-centric problem-solving.
VA
Reduced customer onboarding time to just 10.2 days (earlier 180 days) without increasing CAC.
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