Asia gets its first industry backed crowdfunding platform: Catapooolt Crowd funding and crowdsourcing are the latest trends of mobilizing large communities to support creative projects. Technology and social media platforms are blending today-empowering communities to support their favourite projects to totally democratize the way they seek resources. Studies suggest that it will be a USD 6 Billion engagement by next year, making it one of the fastest growing social revolutions in current times. And the people who are really lapping it up are independent filmmakers, other creative talent and producers. Indeed globally, at any point in time there are more than 500 filmmakers raising funds through various crowd funding platforms. And now the trend has caught up in India as well, with filmmakers like Onir, Anurag Kashyap also adopting this route. Though people tend to think of India as a difficult market for crowd funding, we need to remember that this concept has always been there in India though may not be in the official sense. For ages, whenever it came to community celebrations, people have chipped in with contributions for the cause. In case of films, Shyam Benegal’s Manthan in 1976 was made with contribution of Rs. 2 each from 5 lakh members of the Gujrat Co-Operative Milk Marketing Federation. Down south the late Malayalam filmmaker John Abraham had also used the crowd funding route to make Amma Ariyan in 1986.
CATAPOOOLT is on its way to become India’s first industry-backed and most rewarding crowd-engagement platform for media and entertainment. Primarily aimed at enabling crowd funding for independent creative projects, the platform will also help the industry to seek resources and professional assistance for making, production, distribution and release of creative projects. Founded by the team who first launched crowd-funding in India, the platform will seek partnerships with leading industry luminaries and organizations to unleash a new cinema and creative revolution. Catapooolt will provide interested project owners customised assistance to make their crowd funding campaigns more effective through tie-ups with International crowd funding experts. The platform which will be soon ready, will be user-friendly and will ensure transparent pricing, fund flow and legal engagement.
It will also be backed by industry experts in the form of a strong Advisory Board. There would be 3 level reward mechanism- 1st is the set of experiential rewards which depend on the contribution amount and are given out from the project owner, 2nd is the loyalty points program which we have inbuilt and 3rd is the set of rewards in association with some prominent consumer brands. The project owners will also receive cutomised assistance through tieups with International crowd funding experts.
How does Catapooolt work? It operates on 3 basic principles- Create, Contribute and Celebrate. So anyone who is interested in putting up his/her project in the domain of movies/ music/arts can follow a simple series of processes and put it up on the platform, following which it goes through internal validation and gets approved on meeting requirements. For those keen to contribute and be a part of projects which look interesting to them there is a simple series of steps to enable the same. And for having decided to be part of the Catapooolt family and contributed to a project, there are reward mechanisms in store which is being covered under the celebrate section.
My 100 Years of Indian Cinema Campaign To celebrate 100 years of Indian Cinema, Catapooolt is coming out with a special souvenir-a collector’s 2013 calendar which will be circulated among industry and media luminaries.
Catapooolt will be formally launched in February, 2013.
Key People at Catapooolt. Satish Kataria, Founder and Managing Director. Introduced crowd-funding to India. Is a renowned speaker, mentor and active supporter of start-ups in India. Also headed India’s first SEBI registered Film Fund – Vistaar Religare. Yogesh Karikurve, Associate Director and Co-Founder. More than a decade of strategic experience with leading brands in consumer and entertainment space. Founder of Magus Entertainment- a platform for Indian independent films in global markets. Invitee for the EAVE Film Finance Forum and the Berlinale Talent Campus as a distributor.
How is Catapooolt different from other Crowd Funding platforms? Catapooolt will have a dedicated team which includes people who officially launched crowd funding in India.
Catalysing Creativity by Pooling People