The People Behind Kanhaiya & Atishi’s Big Crowdfunding Campaigns

Kanhaiya Kumar managed to crowdfund as much as Rs 70 lakh through Our Democracy’s platform and Atishi is close.

Bilal Zaidi (L) and Anand Mangnale, co-founders of Our Democracy.in

(Photo Courtesy: Our Democracy)

Video Editor: Vivek Gupta

Delhi-based Bilal Zaidi covered more than 25 elections as a journalist before he realised the need of the hour was to fix the problems with the country’s electoral system.

Soon after, he met Anand Mangnale, and they set out to form Crowdnewsing – an online crowdfunding platform for independent journalists. But, while going along with their business, they realised that there is scope to expand the ambit of crowdfunding.

In December 2017, they designed their first crowdfunded election campaign for Jignesh Mevani, who ended up winning the Banaskantha seat as an independent candidate in the Gujarat Assembly elections.

Come January 2019, Zaidi and Mangnale decided to take the plunge into the Lok Sabha elections and founded their company, Our Democracy.

“When we started, we thought it would be great to get 50 campaigns. But currently, we have done almost 100 campaigns,” said Mangnale, speaking to The Quint.

The platform’s biggest success stories include the campaigns of CPI’s Kanhaiya Kumar and AAP’s Atishi. While Kanhaiya has managed to amass Rs 70 lakh, the permissible limit of funds prescribed by the Election Commission, Atishi is close to achieving the target.

Speaking on the revenue model of the company, Zaidi said that they charge five percent of the money raised in the campaign.

“When you talk of crowdnewsing and crowdsourcing, that's a different level of commitment. People like, people share but when they donate Rs 50 or Rs 100, they are invested in that cause,” Mangnale told The Quint.

As polling season draws to a close, Zaidi and Mangnale believe that they can bring a change in the funding system in India’s electoral politics.

“The most important factor is the kind of response you receive from mainstream political parties. Are they open to changing themselves? We can already witness some green shoots. Candidates from national parties are approaching us. Essentially, when the mainstream leaders start accepting transparency as a virtue, the situation will start to change,” Zaidi said.