Wishberry

Wishberry
Private
Industry Internet
Founded 1 April 2012
Founders Priyanka Agarwal & Anshulika Dubey
Headquarters Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Area served
 Global
Services Crowdfunding
Website www.wishberry.in

Wishberry is a crowdfunding website based in India. It was started in 2012 by ex-McKinsey consultants Priyanka Agarwal and Anshulika Dubey. The platform mainly accepts creative projects for film, music, theatre, dance, photography, art, design, comic and other publishing. It has raised close to $650,000 (Rs. 4 crores) in funding from over 9,000 contributors, for over 200 projects. Contributors on Wishberry get rewards in return for their funds, such as VIP access to the project launch and early adopter discounts.

The venture Wishberry itself has raised 4 Cr ($650,0000) in funding from investors including Rajan Anandan, Sharad Sharma, and Shankar Mahadevan.[1]


History

Wishberry was originally founded by Priyanka Agarwal in 2009 as a bridal registry website, but became an online charity fundraising platform by 2011. The idea of crowdfunding came about when her ex-McKinsey colleague Anshulika Dubey discussed with Agarwal the prospect of running a crowdfunding platform for the creative sector. At that time, Dubey was working on a McKinsey report on social media and crowdfunding, where she learnt about the concept and successes it had in the West. Agrarwal then convinced Anshulika to leave her job and join her to lead creative crowdfunding within Wishberry, while she decided to continue focusing on charity fundraising. The two founders spent 2012 researching whether to focus on the creative or social sector. They tested these two models on their beta product. During mid-2013, they changed the model towards the creative sectors - films, music, theatre, dance, photography, art, design, comic and other publishing - and modified their technology and branding.[2]

In 2015, the company raised angel investment of $650,000 (Rs. 4 crores) from 44 angel investors from technology, ecommerce and creative sectors. Lead investors include Rajan Anandan (MD of Google India)[3] and Sharad Sharma (Co-Founder, ISPIRT Foundation).[4] Creative co-lead investors include Shankar Mahadevan (Founder, Shankar Mahadevan Academy) and director and producer Vikramaditya Motwane.[5]

Model

Every Wishberry project must be a tangible idea and must fall into the creative sectors the platform focuses on—films, music, theatre, dance, photography, art, design, comic and other publishing. Other than this, Wishberry chooses projects that can show some work-in-progress. Every campaigner/project creator has to set a minimum target amount and a deadline to achieve this target amount. All payments are collected by payment gateways such as CCAvenue and PayU through debit or credit cards, or by online banking. If the campaigner is not able to raise 100% of his target amount by the deadline, all the funds are returned back to contributors. This is designed to improve accountability and transparency.[6]

A campaign page on Wishberry displays a pitch video, a certain set of rewards and other information about the project. A pitch video is made by the campaigner to creatively pitch to the audience to urge and invite them to fund his/her project.

The company also provides a consulting service to campaigners on pitch video, rewards and campaign marketing for a fee. Wishberry charges a commission from all successful campaigns and payment gateways charge an additional commission.[7]

Wishberry doesn't take any ownership of the projects raising funds on the platform, nor does it take any guarantee on the timely completion of the projects. It encourages all projects creators and their funders to be in constant touch with each other for updates or feedback.

The company claims that since its launch, over 200 creative projects have raised $650,000 (Rs. 4 crores) on Wishberry from over 9,000 funders in over 50 countries. They also claim a campaign success rate of 75%.[8]

Awards and recognition

The British magazine Stuff described Wishberry as "India's only true crowdfunding effort" and ranked it 6th in its list of top tech startups.[9]

References

  1. ↑ "Crowdfunding platform Wishberry secures Rs 4 cr from Google's Rajan Anandan". entrepreneurindia.com/. 6 June 2013. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
  2. ↑ "http://sheroes.in/articles/meet-the-sheroes-priyanka-agarwal/NzAz". sheroes.in. 22 January 2015. Retrieved 13 February 2015.
  3. ↑ "Crowdfunding platform Wishberry completes $650K seed funding round". startupadda.in. 20 January 2015. Retrieved 16 February 2015.
  4. ↑ "Crowdfunding Platform Wishberry Raises INR 4 Cr. Funding From 44 Investors". inc42.com. 15 January 2015. Retrieved 16 February 2015.
  5. ↑ "Crowdfunding platform Wishberry secures Rs. 4 cr seed funding". thecitynews.in. 20 January 2015. Retrieved 16 February 2015.
  6. ↑ "Things People Keep Asking". wishberry.in.
  7. ↑ "Crowdfunding platform Wishberry secures Rs. 4 crores seed funding". http://www.planetbollywood.com/. Retrieved 16 February 2015.
  8. ↑ "Crowdfunding platform Wishberry secures Rs. 4 crores seed funding". http://youngturks.in.com/. Retrieved 16 February 2015.
  9. ↑ "Drop Box". Google+.