The concept of crowdfunding for budding entrepreneurs

In a lot of western countries, Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been among the leading crowdfunding platforms.

In a lot of western countries, Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been among the leading crowdfunding platforms. Many aspiring entrepreneurs even put their latest technological prototypes for crowdfunding and a lot of industry enthusiasts support the cause. A lot of times, these entrepreneurs even overshoot their target. Many creative projects like comic books and other art related projects also get crowdfunded!

Although crowdfunding sounds a very western concept but it has been immensely popular in India from centuries. Remember how those kids walked up to you during Dussehra and Holi to gather donations for setting up a statue in your locality? And how your society president collected funds for building some infrastructure? That is crowdfunding. The crowd paid up for a project that they wanted to see come
to life.

In India, majorly social causes have been crowdfunded in the past but today the scenario is changing. Websites like Wishberry, Ketto.org and more are changing the face of crowdfunding in India. You can even crowdfund on your own website. We ourselves crowdfunded our project for TBS Planet Comics and saw a good response from the comic fans. Here are few benefits of crowdfunding.

● Leverage your personal network and let them know of your project.
● Reach out to hundreds of important folks you probably would not have ever interacted otherwise.
● Talk to your customers directly and pitch them your idea and get it validated. You get to hear their likes/dislikes and reviews directly.
● Raise funds while you support your operations.
● Establish social media buzz and fanbase.
● Your website ranking on search engines like Google gets improved. Helps in SEO.
● Good and positive Marketing tool to popularize your product.
●  Build a mailing list of your evangelists. These are your first product buyers.  
● Just go to a crowdfunding platform (or host a campaign on your website). Make sure to keep some good rewards for different funding amounts. Study other crowdfunding campaigns in your domain before you host your campaign and keep at least a month’s gap between your campaign announcement to actual launch.

For any queries, feel free to write to me on Rajeev@TBSPlanet.com

Rajeev  Tamhankar

Twitter@rajeevtamhankar

The writer is the founder of TBS Planet Comics. He is ex-Flipkart, Xiaomi employee, and IIT-R Silver medalist.

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