Playing to the Crowd
Have great ideas but lack deep pockets? Pitch your ideas on crowdfunding platforms and let the people get your ideas off the ground.
- Apr 2, 2016,
- Updated Apr 6, 2016 9:54 AM IST
Five graduates from IIT Delhi and Delhi Technological Univer-sity developed a wearable technology, called Safer, using the money they had won in a competition. But their aim - to make women and families in India feel safer - required an additional monetary push. While they developed the final product, they were left with no funds for production. The young minds at Leaf Wearables decided to run a crowdfunding campaign on Ketto.org. And they were not disappointed.
"We started our campaign in August 2015 and invited people to pre-order the wearable jewellery, which was delivered to them only after a couple of months. We received over 200 pre-orders in just a month and managed to raise a funding of over Rs 5,16,670, against our target of Rs 5 lakh, which helped us get into production," says Paras Batra, Co-founder and Director of Sales and Marketing, Leaf Wearables. Post the funding, the product was launched on December 1, 2015, and has sold over 5,000 units since.
Based out of Ahmed-abad, Start51 allows a maximum funding time of 51 days, after which, if the campaign is unsuccessful, the funding is returned to the contributor. It charges a 5 per cent fee on the contribution collected once the project is successfully funded and a process fee of 1.25 to 2.5 per cent. This one, too, offers donation-based funding and no financial return or equity. The users (or donors) are allowed to donate as little as Rs 51 for which they get a reward in return. The platform follows an 'all or nothing' funding policy, which means that if the campaign's target is to raise Rs 2 lakh but raises lesser, all the money is returned to the donors and the campaign is declared unsuccessful.
Five graduates from IIT Delhi and Delhi Technological Univer-sity developed a wearable technology, called Safer, using the money they had won in a competition. But their aim - to make women and families in India feel safer - required an additional monetary push. While they developed the final product, they were left with no funds for production. The young minds at Leaf Wearables decided to run a crowdfunding campaign on Ketto.org. And they were not disappointed.
"We started our campaign in August 2015 and invited people to pre-order the wearable jewellery, which was delivered to them only after a couple of months. We received over 200 pre-orders in just a month and managed to raise a funding of over Rs 5,16,670, against our target of Rs 5 lakh, which helped us get into production," says Paras Batra, Co-founder and Director of Sales and Marketing, Leaf Wearables. Post the funding, the product was launched on December 1, 2015, and has sold over 5,000 units since.
Based out of Ahmed-abad, Start51 allows a maximum funding time of 51 days, after which, if the campaign is unsuccessful, the funding is returned to the contributor. It charges a 5 per cent fee on the contribution collected once the project is successfully funded and a process fee of 1.25 to 2.5 per cent. This one, too, offers donation-based funding and no financial return or equity. The users (or donors) are allowed to donate as little as Rs 51 for which they get a reward in return. The platform follows an 'all or nothing' funding policy, which means that if the campaign's target is to raise Rs 2 lakh but raises lesser, all the money is returned to the donors and the campaign is declared unsuccessful.