ah! Angels, India’s Largest Angel Investment Club has announced a seed investment by its angels in CATAPOOOLT – India’s fastest growing Crowdfunding and Community Engagement platform. Besides ah! Angels, this round of investment is backed by Calcutta Angels, VentureNursery Angels and some leading industry professionals.
A graduate of VentureNursery’s Season 3 program, CATAPOOOLT was launched in July 2013 and is founded by Satish Kataria – who is credited with introduction of crowdfunding in India and who has more than 14 years of strategic management experience. ah! Ventures, which runs India’s largest private equity investment network CLUB ah!, helped facilitate this deal between Calcutta Angels, VentureNursery Angels and its own angel network, ah! Angels.
Launched with a focus to support creative projects and enable them to engage with communities to raise funds and resources, CATAPOOOLT is now endeavouring to leverage the power of Crowdfunding in unique project categories including sports, politics, social enterprises and start-ups apart from creative projects.
It has implemented several industry-firsts in India already – including being modelled as world’s only crowdfunding platform with three-tier rewards structure.
Further, the platform will get support from some of the leading industry professionals – including, but not limited to, Utkarsh Singh (ex-Marketing Director with Indian Premier League); Shiladitya Bora (PVR Directors’ Cut); Ajay Chandwani (Director Percept H) – who will be advising CATAPOOOLT towards development of various verticals.
Talking on the evolution of crowdfunding, Satish Kataria said, “While globally crowdfunding is a USD 5 Billion industry, it is still in its infancy in India – and launching just a crowdfunding platform may not be the answer. Since the very beginning, we have been focusing on adapting the model to India & Asia and have been endeavouring to build strong industry partnerships and building powerful potential contributors base to be able to effectively support the ever-increasing independent projects in the domains of creativity, sports, social enterprises, politics and innovation. I’m really thankful to all esteemed investors and domain experts who have agreed to come on board and support us in this journey of empowering millions of new dreams.”
Sharing his passion, Pradyumna Dalmia, President – Calcutta Angels, mentioned, “While CATAPOOOLT came to us as an investment option, it didn’t take us long to understand its potential and the differentiated model that they have been working on. CATAPOOOLT brought on board an ability to empower all those, who want to make a change, through effective financial intervention. It is encouraging to note how Crowdfunding is changing the global funding dynamics – and we are desirous of partnering with leading Indian companies to assist, facilitate and foster the dreams of a billion plus people – to work hand in hand on these immense possibilities.’’
CATAPOOOLT, in just three months of its launch, was able to achieve the record of highest fund raising for a film through a platform. Now, it is working together with AAP and will be running series of exclusive campaigns to support its fund raising initiatives. This further highlights the transparent and open nature of our philosophy to make this a truly democratic platform where millions can engage.
Further, they are also supporting number of interesting projects including Idi Modalu – which is India’s first Telugu film seeking crowdfunding.
Apoorv Sharma, Executive Vice President, VentureNursery said, “With its inherent strength to democratise fund raising and creating a category of more participative consumers – there’s no doubting the further growth of crowdfunding. And CATAPOOOLT, with its well differentiated model and some interesting forthcoming product innovations, should see strong success and penetration in Indian market.”
Abhijeet Kumar, Co-Founder, ah! Ventures added, “Be it the glamorous films industry or the bold start-ups domain: Crowdfunding is making its impact felt in all sectors and is definitely becoming the new future of funding. We are confident of team at CATAPOOOLT and wish it all the best to possibly alter the funding contours in India and Asia and enable communities to empower what they want.”