Crowdfunding Platform Wishberry Raises Funding From Sharad Sharma, Others

Crowdfunding platform Wishberry has reportedly secured an undisclosed amount in its Pre-Series A round of funding led by iSPIRT co-founder Sharad Sharma.

The round also saw the participation of Rajan Anandan (MD, Google India), Amit Ranjan (co-founder, SlideShare), Alok Mittal (founding member, IAN), Venkat S Raju and several other investors from LetsVenture.

Launched in 2012 by by Priyanka Agarwal and Anshulika Dubey, the platform provides funding assistance to creative projects. It is a rewards-based crowdfunding platform for raising funds for innovative projects. It allows people to pitch their projects to friends, family, fans and everyone else out there who can contribute the funds for their projects/goals.

Commenting on the investment, Priyanka Agarwal, co-founder and CEO, Wishberry said, “We have set out on a mission to help showcase the enormous, yet unexplored, potential of Indian creativity on a global scale. There are already three films crowdfunded on Wishberry which have won the National Award. We want to enable a lot more artists achieve such feats and won’t stop till we have Indian independent artists winning Oscars or Grammys. It’s great to have investors who believe in us and are enabling us to continue on this path.”

As per an official statement, the company has raised around $1.4 Mn from more than 350 crowdfunding projects. The company also claims to have an active network of more than 18K founders across 55 countries.

Sharad Sharma, co-founder and Governing Council member of iSPIRT said, “Recurring fan-funding in small denominations could be a gamechanger in the Indian crowdfunding landscape and make Wishberry a leader in producing independent-content.”

In January 2015, the startup had raised $586K from a clutch of investors including Shankar Mahadevan, Rajan Anandan, Sharad Sharma, Deep Kalra, and film director Vikramaditya Motwane. Prior to that, in October 2014, the startup had raised $150K during TIE THE KNOT, the live funding event organised by TiE Delhi at TiEcon 2014.

In April 2016, Impact Guru, a Mumbai-based crowdfunding startup raised a Seed round of $500K from Singapore VC, RB Investments, and Southeast Asia private fund, Fundnel. Other platforms working in the similar space include Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Catapooolt, and Ketto among others.

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