Ethis Ventures is exploring the possibility of integrating smart contracts into their recently-launched Islamic charity crowdfunding platform and plans to roll out the upgraded blockchain-powered platform before the end of 2018.
After running a successful pilot with Malaysia’s first fully-fledged Shariah bank, Bank Islam, in the first quarter of 2018, Ethis Ventures has officially launched Global Sadaqah. The donation-based crowdfunding platform was launched together with its key partners including charities such as Mercy Malaysia, Islamic Relief Malaysia and the National Heart Institute Foundation.
In its pilot project with Bank Islam, three campaigns to fund heart surgeries for children were funded with Bank Islam providing dollar-to-dollar matching donations. Global Sadaqah is now running another pilot project with the IDB, running multiple campaigns to raise US$1 million in additional funds to finance IDB’s programs to fight avoidable blindness in Africa and to uplift small farmers in Suriname. The project with IDB underscores the openness of multilateral development banks in adopting alternative finance methods to raise funds.
“We decided that the best way to start our path to venture building is to focus on attracting Islamic economy institutions and stakeholders to collaborate with us and circulate good together,” said Ethis Ventures Co-Founder Umar Munshi. “Within a few months of setting up, we started testing Global Sadaqah, then started pitching to strategic partners and managed to get a number of them on board.”
The Islamic fintech venture builder also managed to secure 100,000 Halal Chain Tokens from blockchain start-up Halal Chain, the first digital tokens to be received by Global Sadaqah.