Ranganath Thota is the founder of Fueladream and is doing social entrepreneurship via this platform. Mr Thota in an exclusive interview with NewsX India Alist said “The objective is to try and build something that could help over a million people and the only way you could do it is through this concept called Crowdfunding. Crowdfunding means the act of a number of people coming together to fund something that they believe in.”
The switch from a media person to a social entrepreneur was because of a turning point that happened six years ago. Mr Thota said, “I used to be in the corporate world for about 30 years where I worked across consumer products, media, worked in India, China, South-east Asia. About six years back I realised I was not making a lot of money and it was not as gratifying as I thought it should be. I realised that helping others was more satisfying and meaningful. I literally sold everything and decided to start this crowdfunding platform. I read about it for half an hour, discovered what it is and moved to Bangalore six years back.”
When asked what sets it apart from other competitors, Mr Thota said, “What we discovered is that when people fund creative and innovative ideas, they are overwhelmed and passionate about it and that’s why they support it. Similarly when they fund something for a social need, then they have compassion. You have compassion at one end and passion at the other. But in many cases, people are the same. So, for example, we could fund the education for a child and also something as an electric bike.”
Speaking about one of his innovations he said, “For example, there is a smart wallet with a chip in it that connects to the phone. If you lose your wallet you can actually call it with your phone and if you lose your phone you can call it with your wallet. You can actually use the phone camera and take pictures using the wallet. This project was funded four years ago. But the same person will help people with cataract surgery and education. So the same person can be driven by compassion and passion.”
“The second thing is about giving behaviours. In social media, we talk about the food we eat, the holidays we take and the pictures we like but we never talk about giving. It is never understood. But there is a huge science in consumer behaviour related to giving which is very different. Crowdfunding also has a science and has four key elements that go into it. It includes storytelling, technology, consumer behaviour and most importantly, communication. Unless you know all this, you cannot do crowdfunding.”
“The other thing we do is teach crowdfunding to a large number of people. They could be corporate people, students, etc.”
When asked about how he builds rapport, Thota said, “Nine out of ten people don’t know how to crowdfund even if their intention is good. They need a lot of hand rolling and that is where I and my team actually support them. The other important thing is raising funds. There are a lot of things that we need to understand about the projects that need fundraising. A lot of people come to us with great projects but what they don’t realise is that if they raise five times the amount that they are planning to, they actually cannot execute it. Unlike other platforms where you can start a campaign in an hour, with us it takes two days.”
Talking about the success rate he said, “typically it is about 70%. But if some projects don’t work well it is simply because the person doing it doesn’t manage it well, it is not like the story is not good.”