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He is all of 23 years and talks with an evangelical zeal of transforming the way art and culture shows are funded.
“We are trying to build an ecosystem for creative people as well as people with innovative ideas,” he says of his venture, TheHotStart.com, an online crowd-funding platform.
That is Rajat Das, who describes himself as Head of Relations and Engagement at TheHotStart, whose first project raised about ₹50,000 for a short film — Kalyanaam (meaning marriage) — by Aamir Tameem, a student at Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communications, Pune.
The second project, a Broadway-style musical called Rhythm of Love, the brainchild of Arpana Noel, is now up for funding on the site. That will need ₹4.5 lakh, of which over ₹2 lakh has been raised. Rajat is confident that TheHotStart will manage to raise the balance before April 19, when the musical will be staged in Delhi.
Popular in West Under crowd-funding, a concept that is popular in the West, several individuals, rather than one or two large organised investors, contribute money for a project or an idea.
There are two types of crowd-funding. One is equity based, where the investors get a stake in the project or the idea and the other is rewards based, under which those putting in the money are rewarded in various forms — a free ticket, name on the brochure or as a producer or co-producer of the show, merchandise…
TheHotStart, explains Rajat, will focus on the creative arts, since funding is a big challenge for these projects, especially those by budding artists.
He prefers to call those putting in the money “evangelists” rather than investors and those seeking funds as innovators.
After completing a Bachelor’s in business management, Rajat worked for a short while with a company that organised events and exhibitions.
The idea of a crowd-funding platform, he says, came from his brother, who had heard of it during his travels abroad. He decided to follow up on this idea by sending a short questionnaire to his family and friends, and their friends — in all about 1,000 people — to find out if there were any takers.
A majority of them responded positively and thus was born TheHotStart, which has been bootstrapped and is now a team of three, including Rajat.
Inspired by AAP Rajat feels that it is just a matter of time before crowd-funding as a concept takes off in India, especially among the large, young urban population. He draws the example of the Aam Aadmi Party, which raised funds from individuals across the country.
How does TheHotStart make money? Rajat says it charges a 10 per cent management fee after a project gets funded.
Of this, nearly 6 per cent goes to the payment gateway and the online platform is left with the balance.
“Since we are market makers, we have a strong responsibility to spread the word about crowd funding and educate people,” says Rajat.
“Our vision is to create a platform that can revolutionise the way creative projects are run, not only funded, but run in our country.”
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