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FuelADream, a crowd funding platform and marketplace is positioning itself as the Kickstarter for India, helping people with ideas and non-profit organisations to raise funds for a product or a cause.
The platform, founded by Ranganath Thota, looks at building stories and use social media to market campaigns. It also would do due diligence of projects that are pitched on the platform and also allow donors to share feedback on the progress of projects that they have funded.
"We are different in the way these projects are onboarded. The feedback loop ensures that those projects are monitored on a regular basis. The aim is to build on the trust factor with measurement," said Ranganath
The firm has got over 20 projects on its platform and expects around 250 projects to list annually. FuelADream earns a 9% fee from the funds raised by the projects with an average project size of Rs 8-10 lakh.
According to FuelADream, the global market size for crowd funding increased to $ 34 billion in 2015 from $ 6.1 billion in 2013.The ideas & charities segment is estimated to be around a third or $ 10 billion.
"Our point-of-view as to why this category has not grown enough is that the Funder side issues have not been adequately addressed. The biggest gap is in terms of awareness - how many people in India are aware of such platforms. Two, the near complete absence of the feedback loop - how often do Funders get to know what happens after the money is given, what impact did it generate. Lastly, the kind of campaigns that are 'pitched' to them - some of them do leave a lot to be desired. We believe, if we can solve for these, there are a billion dreams waiting to come true," Ranganath said.
Projects on the platform include an electric bicycle for urban commuting with a starting range of 30 km per charge, building water systems for tribal communities in
Vishakapatnam and a Tiffy template founded by Bengalurean Paul D'souza to help blind identify currency notes.
