 "Logo of FuelADream")
A Bengaluru-based crowd-funding platform, FuelADream, is trying to help founders with brilliant ideas to raise funds and also scale up their business. Many companies from across the country such as Spero Bikes, a Coimbatore-based electric bike manufacturer, Tiffy Template, a Bengaluru-based trust that makes devices for blind people to identify currency, Suryoday Family, a Maharashtra-based NGO that helps build canals in drought hit regions have raised funds using the platform.
The platform, which started last year has seen a huge success because along with helping organisations and individuals raise funds, FuelADream also supports them for marketing and book keeping, which most founders fail in as they are of technical background. The company has raised $250,000 in an initial round of funding over the last 8 months from a clutch of individual investors from the corporate world. It is trying to position itself as the kickstarter of India, but with more value addition.
Paul D'souza, the founder of Tiffy Template, last year got a request from his friend Tiffy, who is herself blind and works in an organisation to support blind people. The request was if he can build a device through which a blind person can check currency notes. D'souza, who describes himself as a 'fulltime inventor', made a simple template using cardboard that could help his friend catch anyone who tried to cheat her.
"I made a few and distributed it to the people in the blind institute. I made a few more and I would give it to anyone I would meet. I never knew how to scale and help every blind person in India," said D'souza, who has raised Rs 4.2 lakh on the portal so far. He has already made 2500 templates which cost of Rs 2 each.
When he started Tiffy Template in January this year, the team from FuelADream helped him to form a trust and also do the marketing. It was they who explained him about how to make the product reach a larger audience. "I was very particular that I want no gains out of it and just the cost of manufacture. They were the ones who got in touch with various blind institutions and asked them if they would be interest to use the device which was given to them free. Other than manufacturing everything is handled by them, this lets me focus more on my work," said Dsouza.
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The platform handles marketing and other needs for almost 70 per cent of its customers depending on the needs of the customers.
"We are different from kickstarter in three ways. It is not a platform where we rely only on people who approach us, but we have a business development team that is looking out for innovative ideas. We help them with the campaign, marketing, business model and scaling up. We don't stick to ideas but also to causes, campaigns and events," said Ranganath Thota, co-founder of FuelADream.
According to FuelADream, the global market size for crowdfunding increased to $34 billion in 2015 from $ 6.1 billion in 2013.The ideas and charities segment is estimated to be around a third or $10 billion.
The extent of reach of the platform can gauged by the fact that Spero Bikes, an electric bike manufacturer who has a campaign running on the platform currently, got enquiries from 10 different countries for the bikes. The company raised Rs 37 lakh and will roll out the first set of 107 bikes by September 15. The founder came to know about FuelADream through a common friend and says that the two best things about the platform were feedback and the reach.
"We raised money as per expectations and much quicker. This is very important for a product based company like me. Also, another important thing is we have a lot of feedback through the platform. We have people giving suggestions as well as ideas on what more we could do with the bike. This acts like a validation," said Manikandan, co-founder of Spero Bikes.
While crowd-funding platforms like FuelADream, are famous for hosting product based startups, one of the initiatives that got a record funding was actually a project to build a canal in the drought hit Horti village in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. For the last 25 years, Suryoday Family has been working towards the upliftment of the farmers and quality of living in their village. However, the recent drought created an alarming situation with number of farmer suicide increasing drastically. As their last resort to seek help, they approached FuelADream to raise Rs 3 lakhs for building a six kilometre canal.
"We need a total of 6 lakh, we have raised three lakh ourselves and needed another three. The platform helped us raise the money and build the canal in a record time of 12 days," said Sunil Patil, a member of Suryoday Family.
