Note: This is not an end to end tutorial on how to run a Kickstarter. This is useful for you, if you are planning to launch a Kickstarter campaign from India and have already done your basic research.

From 9th November to 8th December of 2022, we ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund our idea called “Aaapki Poojita” – billed as the first adult animated series in India: www.aaapkipoojita.com.  

Here are our top line numbers: 

– We reached 100% of our target amount in 8 days.

– Total number of backers were 249.

– Largest pledge amount was 1.5 lakhs INR.

– We got overfunded and closed at 140%.

– Our target was CAD 25064 and we ended up raising CAD 34961.

– Majority of our backers were Indians where Kickstarter is not widely popular.

– Most of our backers were “first-time users” – these users had never used Kickstarter before. In fact, in order to pledge on Kickstarter you need to make a profile – most of our backers walked the extra mile and created new accounts.

– This got Kickstarter’s attention – we were bringing them many first-time users from a new market AND our project was a unique one. So they gave us a Projects We Love badge – which includes perks like special features on their homepage and much more.

– I would be undermining the effort of some people if I say that we were straight-up handed out this badge. We connected with Zain Memon, who had run the biggest Kickstarter project from India – the board game called Shasn. He gave us invaluable feedback and also connected us with the Kickstarter team to ask for this badge.

– We also looked at the campaign The Bystander Anthology by Kadak Collective as an inspiration.

– We found out that Kickstarter has section-wise leads. We found the lead of Comics (we couldn’t find the one for Animation) and messaged her on Instagram to ask for her Email ID (don’t talk about business on Instagram). She helped too!

WHY KICKSTARTER?

There are many platforms out there, so why did we choose Kickstarter? 

The biggest competitor is Indiegogo. On Indiegogo, when you run a project, you can keep whatever money you raise. In comparison, you have to meet 100% of your target on Kickstarter, otherwise the money is not taken from the backer in the first place.

Now this might get you interested in Indiegogo – but the audience knows that whatever money they give you, is gone instantly. But on Kickstarter, they can back projects more freely because they know it will only be charged once you reach 100%.

Also, each platform has its own speciality – Indiegogo is more popular for tech-related devices but Kickstarter is known for creative projects. In fact comics are the most funded projects on Kickstarter. You can seal the deal here.

There are some other platforms as well – Ketto is known more for healthcare charity, Milaap too. GoFundMe can feel very needy.

So Kickstarter was really a no-brainer for us.

KICKSTARTER & INDIA

Most people don’t know this, but Indians can’t launch a Kickstarter campaign – there is a list of selected countries from where one can launch a Kickstarter campaign.

Anybody from anywhere can back a project, but only people from this list of countries can launch a project.

Why is this? Frankly, I don’t know. What I have heard is that the Indian government does not support crowdfunding – so there are some backing issues. 

It may one day happen.

But there is a way out. Kickstarter is aware of this limitation so they have ZERO PROBLEMS if you are not in these countries – you can still create your project. The only two things that need to be based in these countries are an identity proof and the bank account connected to the project.

We used the account and ID of our friend – Sneaky Artist / Nishant Jain. 

So remember, you can still clearly and publicly announce that your project is based in your city and country. 

THE EXPERTS

As first-time Kickstarter campaign creators, we were worried about making beginners’ mistakes. We noticed that the Shasan kickstarter page had one more collaborator. On further exploration, we found out that there are these people called “Kickstarter Experts” that are recommended by Kickstarter themselves – we wrote to all of them and were finally connected with TKG – The Kickstarter Guy.

TKG coach Melissa got on a call with us and this is what they do – they have a list of modules, a course structure and each module ends with homework. As you go through them, you prepare for your Kickstarter project from scratch. If you are reading this, you have already made your profile on Kickstarter and have already explored their Kickstarter One-Sheets (Kickstarter is really helpful that way) but TKG takes the game to another level. After every module they set up a call with you where your queries are discussed and like this you flow from choosing a platform to all the way into project closure. 

They have a very high success rate, so it makes sense to hire them if your raise is above 6 lakh INR, in my opinion.

They charge a flat fee and a percentage on top. All of it is worth it. We couldn’t have made it without them. Initially, we were apprehensive about cultural translation of context, ideas and approach but after running our thing we can confidently say that the communication translates, the tactics work similarly and the TKG team is progressive and liberal – they did not undermine us. Obviously they do not babysit you and their process will fail if you don’t put in the work.

USING HINDI IN OUR VIDEO & THE LAUNCH DATE

So far, all Kickstarters launched from India have used English. Aiming at primarily American/White wallets. We decided that we will focus on OUR audience which was desi. We were clear that they will get Hindi+subtitles in this post Parasite, RRR world. Here is our Pitch Video.

As for the launch date – we were told that American and Indian wallets operate differently. American wallets are pretty open – they vomit money till September and after October nobody launches any Kickstarter because most of the spending is focussed on Christmas. Our original launch date was overlapping with Diwali which led to a lot of confusion in our team. What to do? Do we think of Diwali as our Christmas so we will have to compete for money? That was the thought of my teammate Mukund and we eventually agreed. We still ran the risk of not raising any money from foreign backers because they just don’t spend at that time. But that turned out to be the correct decision – between 9th November to 8th December – there were no major festivals and cultural interruptions and Kickstarter was a platform that was also pretty empty from its majorly western audience which helped us get more attention.

THE MOST IMPORTANT BIT – IT’S NOT ABOUT GOING VIRAL

Kickstarter is a different beast. It has literally nothing to do with going viral. It’s all about emails and tonnes of tactical things. Lots of it is covered in Kickstarter One-Sheets and in the expert courses if you choose to work with TKG. But drill one thing into your brain – influencers and social media in general have a HORRIBLE conversion rate. Any time we brought up events (there was a Comic Con during the Kickstarter) to our experts, they dismissed it immediately. Tonnes of celebrities who love Bakarmax posted about it – and those we saw had little to no conversion.

The only thing that got us backers is when we wrote to people directly. We had put together a team for this of about 20 people – 10 who worked at Bakarmax and 10 others who were ready to help us. All of us wrote to the people we knew and sent them direct emails. That did everything.

TARGET AMOUNT

There is this page on Kickstarter which shows you how successful you are likely to be for a certain amount on Kickstarter. I can’t find that page now, but here is the basic help page. 

This is what I figured out, and I will speak in INR. Any project about 6 lakh INR is difficult to finance. 3 lakh to 6 lakh is a sweet spot – you can launch a Kickstarter and be assured. If you have put the work in then it will succeed. In fact I found so many projects where animation college students were raising money to finance the production of their film – they had already done the pre production. It’s a great idea. Kickstarter has lots of fears associated with it but if your target amount is below 6 lakhs, take that risk! Also, book/comics projects are good and likely to succeed because people get a clear cut product at the end, same with board games.

Kickstarter I realised, also has this harakiri built into it. Once you have a successful Kickstarter project, you launch more – but if your project fails, most people do this silent harakiri and do not attempt more. I might be wrong in this regard.

Our key learning when it comes to deciding the Target amount is to keep it at bare minimum. The idea is to cross the 50% mark as soon as possible. People support you if they see you are already winning. It’s sad, but it’s the truth.

CARD FAILURE

Indian Debit Cards failed at the time of project closure. People had pledged throughout the project duration. At the time of pledge, their cards were not charged. They were charged on the last day when the project succeeded. On our last day, 25% of the cards failed. Kickstarter gave us 7 days to resolve this – we connected with our backers individually. When even after multiple attempts of solving it with the bank didn’t work, we took money from them using UPI and pledged using our own cards that had worked – we helped them pledge through a proxy.

REWARDS AND POPULARITY

Here is a graph to help you understand our most popular rewards – it’s too much work to explain it in an article. Kickstarter has a lot of resources to plan this and if you get an expert on-board, they will also help you assess this.

GENERATING FOMO

We started posting about our idea a month before our Kickstarter launch. We only posted about our idea and did not speak or even mention Kickstarter at all. This built a wave of attention which we capitalised when we launched our campaign.

We were originally working on another idea when we decided to switch over to Aaapki Poojita. It is called Bekar Bhawan and we will go back to it one day.

I wanted to do a Kickstarter campaign at least once in my life, and this one project seemed like the perfect opportunity because all other avenues of funding were closed to us. We went on Kickstarter and it validated us. Hope this information helps you! It’s haphazard but it’s better being here than not being here at all. 

We are now busy building our animated show for a November 2023 release. Where will it be released? If you backed it, you will know. If you didn’t – well, first learn to be a backer, before you launch your own projects.