Virender Singh, a deaf and mute wrestler in Haryana, won India many gold medals but very few people knew about him. Goonga Pehelwan , a documentary based on his life and struggles, forced the government to change their award policies towards sportsmen with disability in the country. Last March, the film directed by Vivek Chaudhary, Prateek Gupta and Mit Jani, also received the National Award for best debut in non-feature film category.
In New Delhi, Kalyani Khona, an entrepreneur, is heading a project called Loveability, which is the world’s first matchmaking mobile application for people with disability. The application, soon to be released to the public, aims to cater to the needs of 200 million people with disability worldwide. It connects people on the basis of cure availability, medical conditions, levels of independence and lifestyle choices.
In an earlier age, both ideas would have met an early death with no funding or social validation. But both Goonga Pehelwan and Loveability became a reality, thanks to crowdfunding startup Wishberry.in, which provides a platform for creative projects across films, music, publishing, comics, theatre and apps. Goonga Pehelwan raised over Rs. 3 lakh from 140 backers and Loveability raised Rs. 6 lakh from over 140 people.
A growing number of startup entrepreneurs, innovators, musicians, filmmakers, and artists in the country are turning their dream projects into reality through crowdfunding platforms like Wishberry. They use small amounts of capital from a large number of individuals over the Internet to finance new business ventures or projects. The success of Wishberry has also changed the notion that Indians don’t fund art and creativity projects. “What fascinated me is that the problem was not ‘behaviour of giving’ but that their attention had to be captured,” says Anshulika Dubey, the 29-year-old co-founder and COO of Wishberry.
Dubey and Priyanka Agarwal were working on a project in consulting firm McKinsey when they discovered the crowdfunding concept. The company has, until now, raised Rs. 5.5 crore from 11,000 people (in India and abroad) and funded about 250 projects. Among these is Punyakoti , India’s first animated film in Sanskrit based on folklore about a pious cow and a hungry tiger. It is being made in collaboration with several animation professionals across the country. The film has raised over Rs. 40 lakh from 282 backers.
Menstrupedia is a unique comic book on busting myths around menstruation. It raised over Rs. 5 lakh from 175 people. Seeing this, American multinational P&G came on board and made the project global. The comic book is now available in several Indian and foreign languages.
“Crowdfunding in India is picking up like crazy,” says Sharad Sharma, a top angel investor and former Yahoo India R&D CEO, who has backed Wishberry. According to him, “Indians are very good donors, the problem is that they are not good campaigners.” It is not just arts projects like films that are getting funds on crowdfunding platforms. Many startup entrepreneurs are finding the medium useful to develop cutting-edge innovations and market them across the globe.
This October, Exploride pulled off the biggest crowdfunding campaign for a startup from India. It raised $6,54,531 (Rs. 4.3 crore) on Indiegogo. Exploride makes transparent heads-up displays that offer drivers a distraction-free view of the car dashboard, mobile notifications, maps, music and calls without losing focus on the road. It now has orders from about 70 countries including Myanmar, Greece, Sweden and Iran. “I received about 6,000 emails. Besides market validation, crowdfunding is good to iterate your product,” says Sunil Vallath, Exploride’s 27-year-old founder.
Also, many entrepreneurs based in smaller towns find it easier to raise money through crowdfunding rather than travelling to metros like Bengaluru and Mumbai to woo investors. In Kochi, tech startup SectorQube ran a campaign on international crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to introduce its innovation MAID, a smart multifunctional oven, across the globe. The campaign raised $123,920 (Rs. 81 lakh) in 35 days. The goal was to raise $50,000 (Rs. 33 lakh), which they reached in six days. “Many people betting on you on crowdfunding platforms are tech-savvy and don’t mind even if you fail,” says Sabarish Prakash, 26-year-old co-founder of SectorQube. Launched by six friends in 2011, SectorQube created an Internet of Things, a technology where devices communicate with each other, for the consumer durables domain. It’s smart oven MAID — Make All Incredible Dishes — makes cooking easier, fun and social. MAID has touch interface rather than usual buttons. A recipe database, connected via Wi-Fi, provides an unlimited number of recipes to its interface. It can be controlled via touch, gesture and voice. The product has a personalisation engine that can learn a user’s cooking habits and calorie needs and suggest recipes based on them.
“All these are global ideas, and by using crowdfunding, smart entrepreneurs can take them to the global level,” says Sanjay Vijayakumar, Chairman, Startup Village, a Kochi-based business incubator. “India is not known for building world-class products.” Startup Village has incubated hardware startups such as SectorQube, Fin Robotics, Exploride and MindHelix, which have raised funding from international crowdfunding websites Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Fin Robotics has developed Neyya, a ring-shaped wearable, that interacts with connected devices through a gesture-touch interface.
Last March, the Kerala-based Fin Robotics raised over $200,000 (Rs. 1.3 crore) in 40 days on Indiegogo. “It was very difficult to get out of the small village. We needed lot of resources,” says Rohildev N., the co-founder. Within a few months of its funding success, Fin raised money from venture capital firm Kalaari Capital, and it recently received an investment from Silicon Valley-based investor Keyur Patel, who is also the chairman of Fuse Capital that has $1.5 billion (Rs. 9,931 crore) in assets under management. This week, it launched its wearable technology product at Amazon, Bloomingdales, Brookstone and Selfridges.
Last October, MindHelix raised $119,120 (Rs. 78 lakh) on Kickstarter for Rico, a smart-home security device that uses your spare smartphone as its brain and eyes. The colourful dog-shaped device is packed with sensors that detect motion, smoke, temperature, humidity and carbon monoxide.
Experts, however, say that crowdfunding in India is still at a nascent stage. And small ventures that raised money on international crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter have to now set up a separate US entity. According to Satish Kataria, founder of crowdfunding firm Catapooolt, globally it is a $16 billion (Rs. 1 lakh crore) market and expected to grow 100 per cent year-on-year. “And Asia is expected to be the major growth driver for crowd funding,” says Kataria. Innovators, artists and startups that raise money through crowdfunding campaigns typically reward their investors with early access to products. Last month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission came up with new rules that would allow individual investors to take equity stakes in start-ups raising capital via crowdfunding. China and Thailand have opened up securities crowdfunding, while Singapore is expected to allow it this year.
In India, securities crowd funding, where an investor can take a stake in the business, is still not allowed. “SEBI and the Finance Ministry are actively looking into it, especially with the government wanting to promote start-ups,” says Kataria, whose firm has funded 40 projects and helped raise Rs. 1.2 crore from 2,000 contributors.
But there are no regulatory issues when it comes to crowdfunding through donation and rewards, according to Varun Sheth, CEO of Ketto.org. “Only on the equity side, a clarity in regulation has to be expected,” says Sheth whose company helped FitKT, a wearable fitness band, to raise money on its platform.
The other area where crowdfunding platforms can make an impact is the not-for-profit sector. Indian charities raise $10 billion (Rs. 66,000 crore) every year with 99 per cent fundraising happening offline. “Even if we are able to tap a small part of it, there is enormous potential for crowdfunding,” says Piyush Jain, founder, Impact Guru, a crowdfunding platform for not-for profit organisations. Impact Guru plans to scale up through activities like forming partnership marathons and collaborating with schools and colleges.
As Vijayakumar of Startup Village says, “Crowdfunding will democratise angel funding.”
Crowdfunding impact
* Wishberry.in provides crowdfunding platform for creative projects across films, music, publishing, comics, theatre and apps.
* Goonga Pehelwan , a documentary film forced the government to change their rewarding award policies towards differently-abled sportsmen with disability in the country.
* Loveability which is the world's first matchmaking mobile application for the differently-abled people with disability.
* Punyakoti, India’s first animated film in Sanskrit based on a South Indian folklore about a pious cow and a hungry tiger.
* Menstrupedia, a unique comic book on busting myths of about menstruation to educate girls.
* This October Exploride became the biggest crowdfunding success story for a startup from India, raising over Rs. 4.3 crore on Indiegogo.
* MAID is a crowdfunded smart oven product that makes cooking easier, fun and social.
* Fin Robotics which got crowdfunding has developed ‘Neyya’, a ring-shaped wearable, which lets consumers control gadgets like smartphones and presentation displays.
* Globally crowdfunding is $16 billion (Rs. 1 lakh crore) market and expected to grow 100 per cent year on year.
* Last month U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission came up with new rules which would allow individual investors to take equity stakes in startup businesses raising capital via crowd funding.
* SEBI and Finance Ministry is working on the norms that may allow equity crowdfunding.
