Limited to social areas, crowdfunding is seeing growth

NAGPUR: For any budding or new entrepreneur, the biggest limiting factor is the capital or investment at his disposal. With Indian start-ups coming of age, they have begun exploring a non-traditional source of resources that has been much popular in the western world for a few years. Crowd-funding is now emerging as the hot new trend in the industry.
From making movies and music that have niche fan following to promoting a social cause or looking for someone to sponsor your dream holiday – anything and everything is up on crowdfunding platforms.However, this trend spells the most amount of excitement are creators of socially relevant apps and innovative products.
“The crowdfunding sector in India is still at its nascent stage, having picked up only in 2014. Investors still shy away from it, and it is largely dependent on projects that have a social or emotional relevance. This is why we see many connoisseurs investing in movies and music they support. There is some room for innovative products but their success often depends on incentivizing by throwing in gift and rewards,” said Deepak Menaria, founder of innovations firm Lemon Ideas. He thinks that social media has the potential to make the sector bigger in the coming financial year.
Pranav Curumsey, head of business development at crowdfunding platform Ketto says that despite the late discovery of this source, India has seen it grow by leaps and bounds. “Business this year has already been four or five times the amount it was in the last financial year. It’s not like every campaign is worth people’s money. Proper research and marketing go into putting up selected projects on platforms,” he added. Among Ketto’s most successful campaigns has been celebrities gathering resources for Kashmir flood relief and providing contributions to a team of tribal girls from rural Jharkhand to play football and compete in the USA Cup.
“Crowdfunding is not as simple as taking money from strangers on the internet. While in the west, pure philanthropy model often works, it’s not the same in India. Here, even philanthropy needs to be done on a give-and-take basis and religious philanthropy takes precedence as God’s blessings are seen as biggest reward one can get. A tangible reward has to be put in by most people to get the crowd’s attention,” believes Anshulika Dubey, cofounder and chief operating officer of Wishberry, one of India’s most successful crowdfunding platforms. She foresees the emergence of what she calls ‘philanthropy 2.0’ in the country which involves providing the seed fund to help realize other people’s dreams.
It is this incentivizing that spells success for the company, with 70% of their projects being able to reach their targeted funding. Some of the successful campaigns from her company include Mame Khan’s debut album, a Pothole Watch Mobile App that virtually turned all Mumbaikars into whistleblowers, a comic book that busted myths surrounding menstruation called Menstrupedia which was distributed among girls from underprivileged background and a campaign called Lights in Pongging which helped light up little hill villages in North East India among others.