People Power

At this year’s Oscars, Inocente became the first “crowd-funded” film to win the award for best documentary on a short subject. This was Kickstarter’s first victory (so far, they’ve have received six nominations) and it’s given more clout to the growing belief that crowd-funding is the solution for those who have ideas, but don’t have the funds to enact the ideas.

In India, crowd-funding has been used to help fund everything from movies to music gigs. Films, in particular, have seen a heartening response. In 2003, actor-director Rajat Kapoor used crowd-funding to raise funds for his critically acclaimed movie, Raghu Romeo. In 2011, 400 people invested in filmmaker Onir’s I Am. Peddler, a crowd-funded film directed by Vasan Bala (Anurag Kashyap’s assistant) made it to the Critics Week at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

“This year will see a revolution in crowd-funding,” says Sneha Kohli, co-founder of the National Crowdfunding Association (NCFA). The NCFA was started six months ago to connect start-ups and entrepreneurs with crowd-funding platforms. “We have already identified around eight crowd-funded websites that are in various stages of starting up,” she says.

The most active site of the existing platforms is Wishberry, started in November 2011. It boasts of a 40% success rate, having raised around Rs2 crore across 500 projects and reaching 5,000 contributors. They currently have nine live projects. When Wishberry started out, they entertained only movies; music and theatre were added last year. “These are the three genres where India is willing to spend money,” says Anshulika Dubey who started Wishberry with Priyanka Agarwal. Since then, Wishberry has helped student film-maker Vanshaj Kapur crowd-fund his diploma film The Big Film. Director Manish Gandhi used it to raise Rs1 lakh in just 27 days for his play Limbo. In the social sector, Wishberry helped Saritha Thomas crowd-fund a community  radio project.

The Perks
In crowd-funding, people fund a project/campaign and in return are given incentives like their name on credits, workshops, merchandise etc. There is no profit sharing offered and no guarantee of money payback. On January 13, 63 people contributed to raise Rs3 lakh (in 60 days) on Wishberry for musician Aazin Printer’s debut solo album. In return, investors were offered invitations to the launch, dinner dates and jam sessions, t-shirts, vinyl copies of the album and finally, the chance to be associate/executive producer for his first single.

“Initially it felt like I was begging. Then I realised that I have to work really hard to get the money,” he says. In addition to publicising his request on social media, Printer also personally contacted family, friends, people from the music industry and anyone he thought could help.

“Money apart, what you are looking at is for many eyes to fall on your project. You are building a family of people who believe in your work before it even comes out there,” says Manjari Sharma, a New York/Mumbai photographer. “It’s all about exposure.” Sharma, 33, managed to raise $26,000 (from 400 people) using Kickstarter for her Darshan project, a series of nine photos that re-imagines Indian deities. After she put out her campaign, it was picked up by blogs, some local newspapers and was finally endorsed by Kickstarter helping her reach out to its entire database.

“It gave me a chance to publicly talk about my project instead of making private requests which is harder,” says Priyamvada Narayanan, who used Kickstarter to raise money ($21,000) for her debut film, The Breadfruit Tree.

Backend support
This platform provided by crowd-funding sites is available for a percentage of the money collected. Wishberry takes 7.5 to 10% of the profits and the percentage is doubled if the project is unsuccessful. While Kickstarter works on an ‘all or nothing basis’, Wishberry allows people to keep whatever money they have raised.

In addition, they provide all the back-end support — designing the page, publicising it on different media and providing leads and contacts of interested funders. “We’ve made the process of asking for money easy, more cool”, says Dubey.

The soon to be launched crowd-funding portal Pik A Venture promises “added services for entrepreneurs”. These include legal advice, company registration advice, consulting, campaign management and also incubator and accelerator services.

“If anyone needs crowd funding, it is India. The gap between the number of ideas out there worth telling, in each sector and not being told because of insufficient funds is huge,” says Rinkesh Shah, 28, the founder and head of business development at the recently-launched crowd-funding platform, Ignite Intent. “We are here to fill that gap.”

The revolution, it seems, has already begun.