SL crowd-sourcing platform Help.lk to target youth – Special Report
Having gone online recently, the first week of May 2015 in fact; Help.lk is a local crowd-funding platform along the lines of Kickstarter, Indiegogo, etc. set up by US-based Sri Lankan entrepreneur Kalpa Alawatta. The website currently hosts four charityprojects, with five more in the pipeline awaiting the proper verification processes to ensure donors are not defrauded.
According to Mr. Alawatta, Co-Founder and Chief Executive of Crowdfund Lanka Ltd, (Reg No: PV 104875), “we actually rejected about three campaigns; we do some background verifications and they did not meet (our requirements) or have the proper documentation we are looking for. We want to maintain trust and value the money being donated to these causes”.
Help.lk’s developer team at Ensiz
He added, “from an audience perspective, we had about 60,000 hits on our site, which was just about a month after our launch. We have folks visiting our website from all over the world. And 650 likes on our Facebook page and all the campaigns we launched have a 6,000 plus reach so far… We’ve raised about US$ 1,000 for now for our four campaigns. Since the concept is new to Sri Lanka, we are spending some time to educate Sri Lankans, share our message and get the word out. Not many people know about it yet. We are at the very initial stages”.Mr. Alawatta further revealed that he and his co-founders Nalin Perera, who heads up technical operations, and Upesh de Silva, looking after marketing and outreach, all of who currently work at Virtusa, initially came up with this idea after doing some fundraising for Sri Lanka-based charities, with a view to come up with a better way to help local projects.
He also identified Help.lk’s local technology provider as being Sri Lanka-based software firm Ensiz, which services Help.lk by providing office space, developers and other facilities. He also noted that while Help.lk was still not finished setting up its offices, they did not see the need for everything to be ready before launching the platform.
In terms of donations, Mr. Alawatta indicated that PayPal was mainly used to accept donations from multiple, worldwide sources, including credit cards, and these contributions were then transferred to Help.lk’s account and later, in the form of a cheque, to the individual projects. He also noted that there was a fee of three per cent for projects that did not fall under the purview of registered charities but, when they did, there were no charges.
Commenting on his business model, he opined that he saw demand coming from donation-based projects, for charitable causes; equity-based, where contributors received a stake in the new company or product in return for their contribution; lending-based, with contributors re-paid for their investment over a period of time; and rewards-based, wherein a tangible item or service in offered in return for funding. He also signalled that his platform’s primary target were those coming out of universities and/or technical colleges with an idea, looking for funding.
Adding to this, Mr. Alawatta also identified the following, future plans for Help.lk: introducing crowd funding concepts and educating people by way of a series of videos about crowd funding to be released soon; integration of mobile payments platforms, such as eZcash and mCash; adding Sinhala and Tamil functionality to the website; partnering with universities and technical institutes to help fund new products, research and/or ventures by young entrepreneurs; marketing Help.lk to expats to bring in donations from Sri Lankans around the world; offering advertising facilities on Help.lk website to companies wishing to market their products/services; and, eventually, reaching out to local hospitals to get them to refer patients in need of funds for Help.lk campaigns. (JH)