Planet Bollywood
Crowdfunding platform Wishberry secures Rs. 4 crores seed funding
- Planet Bollywood Special Correspondant           Let us know what you think about this story

Leading Indian crowdfunding platform Wishberry, founded by ex-McKinsey consultants Priyanka Agarwal (CEO) and Anshulika Dubey (COO) in 2012 has secured four crores in seed funding. The round has been co-led by Rajan Anandan, MD Google India, and Sharad Sharma, Co-Founder of iSPIRT Foundation, along with 42 strategic investors including leading Bollywood composer Shankar Mahadevan, critically acclaimed filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane and Rohit Khattar, Chairman, Cinestaan, Mumbai Mantra & Old World Hospitality.

With a community of 9,000+ funders across 50+ countries and a campaign success rate of 75%, Wishberry is India's leading rewards-based crowdfunding platform and commonly referred to as “Indian’s Kickstarter.” Wishberry focuses on projects spanning across film, music, arts and design, theatre, food, technology innovations and publishing. However, creative projects account for 70% of funds raised on Wishberry so far, of which music and film alone account for 50%. “I am excited about finding the next generation of fantastic musicians and creating purposeful, inspiring music,” said Shankar Mahadevan. "It's great to have a funding pipeline for independent filmmakers,” added Vikramaditya Motwane.

Wishberry plans to use the funds to grow its team across marketing and technology and build awareness for crowdfunding in India. “Our goal is to crowdfund 100 crores across 5,000 projects over the next two years and raise our Series A," said Priyanka. "In five years, we want to build a community of 3-4 million funders and support 50,000 creative projects on Wishberry." Wishberry selects projects based on their crowdfundability. Considering the fact that Indians are not used to the Western concept of DIY, Wishberry assigns a crowdfunding coach to guide the selected campaign creators in creating compelling pitch videos, developing rewards, and marketing.

Once a campaign goes live on Wishberry, the project creator has to reach his/her target amount within 60 days, failing which, all the money is refunded back to the funders making it an “all-or-nothing” platform, ensuring transparency and trust.

Wishberry charges a non-refundable fee of Rs. 2,500 for campaign consulting and 10% a commission on the funds raised by successful projects.

Within a short span, many interesting creative projects have come out of Wishberry including:

• Films: Bhaskar Hazarika’s Kothanodi, Srinivas Sunderrajan’s Greater Elephant, Manjeet Singh’s Mumbai Cha Raja, Bikas Ranjan Mishra’s Chauranga; Mit Jani, Vivek Chaudhary and Prateek Gupta's Goonga Pehelwan, Payal Sethi’s Leeches, Prathamesh Krisang’s One Last Question

• Music: Mame Khan’s debut album, Vasuda Sharma’s Attuned Spirits, Sandunes’ animated music video for “Exit Strategy”, The Vinyl Record’s music video for “Whims,” Parvaaz’s Baran, Aazin Printer’s The Original Mr. Printer

• Publishing: Aditi Gupta, Tuhin Paun and Rajat Mittal's comic book Menstrupedia, Cyrus Daruwalla’s graphic novel I Take This Train Too

• Events & Festivals: Strawberry Fields XVII, IGNITE! Festival of Contemporary Dance, Bangalore Open Air, Control Alt Delete, Kashish, Focus Festival, The Goa Project, Bitotsav, Project Frame ‘14

• Theatre: Manish Gandhi’s Limbo Festival, Maneesh Verma’s A Kind of True Story; Ayan Banerjee’s Brishti, Finally…


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