Crowdfund your whims

Two years ago Siddhant Dand of Mumbai started a campaign on a crowdfunding website to raise money to buy a pizza for himself. Crazy, huh? So what about the 52-year-old man who recently called crowdfund platform Impact Guru and said he was getting threats of a possible attack from aliens and wanted to create a campaign for people to support him.

Outlandish proposals

Crowdfunding is a great way to raise money for worthy projects - medical treatment or education for those who cannot afford it; art, books or films that would find few backers from the commercial space, and so on. But increasingly, it is also attracting people with dubious proposals. For instance in Bengaluru, Chandrika is running a campaign on a popular crowdfunding platform Ketto to raise Rs 1.5 lakh to manufacture a 'smart' pan which will prevent milk from spilling over when boiled. Similarly, Milaap, a fundraising site largely for education and health related campaigns, was approached recently by a man from Delhi who wanted to raise Rs 4 crore to buy a Ford Mustang - his only wish in life, he claimed. In April this year, a man from Atlanta started a campaign to raise $15,000 to buy an engagement ring!

Sometimes, the fundraising proposals skirt the edge of the law. Tarun Saxena, who works with Impact Guru, reminisces about a call from someone called Pawan who had escaped from prison and needed funds for his daily expenses. "He thought we were a social enterprise. When we tried enquiring, he disconnected," he says.

Some campaigns are plain frivolous - for instance those crowdfunding for birthday parties. BitGiving, a crowdfunding platform, got so many of these that it curated the concept of 'Birthday Fundraisers' where individuals fundraise for a social cause on their birthday. Then there are campaigns to raise funds for plastic surgery from a woman who wanted a smile like Deepika Padukone's and a student who wanted to raise about a crore of rupees for his CA exams.

It just gets funnier

Thankfully, both campaigns were rejected as the proposal makers did not provide the sites with documents to substantiate their claims. While most of the sites allow people to create a campaign and start generating funds, the money is transferred only after their claims are verified. In case the campaigners are unable to do so, the money is refunded to the donors.

Sometimes, also, what is provided as proof is laughable. A man from Batala, Punjab approached Milaap to raise funds for an art gallery for his son. "As supporting documents, he sent sketches of Chota Bheem," says Arti Rajan from Milaap.

What's bizarre - even more so than the campaigns themselves - is that they end up raising some money, showing that someone somewhere has faith in them. For instance, a recent campaign to fund a 'smart wallet' that can help take selfies on Fuel A Dream was meant to raise Rs 5 lakh, but ended up generating Rs 23 lakh. Another ongoing campaign to propagate a 'selfie sari' that can be draped in six minutes, has already generated Rs 42,000 until now. Both campaigns are reward-based - that is, donors are promised the products as reward for a discounted price. With funding campaigns such as these, "we look at people who have prototypes," says founder of Fuel A Dream, Ranganath Thota. Clearly, we've come a long way from the idea of crowdfunding.