Ignite Intent – Helping Plain Ideas Transform to Reality Through Crowdfunding

In India unlike West, college students do not earn their own pocket money and are still dependent on parents. And as parents struggle to balance everything, college students could do well by trying their hand at handling some of their finances – maybe to atleast fund their ideas and projects. All it needs is reaching out to the right people who can support them and Ignite Intent is helping you do that by the means of crowdfunding where individuals (Intent Owner) who require financial support for their cause (intent) put their requirements (generally financial) on an internet website to request financial support.Founded by Rinkesh Shah, an MBA from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Ignite Intent happened when Rinkesh’s friend generously declared that he would give him an amount to support whenever he decides to start his venture and that was his euphoria movement. His Marwari upbringing also made him choose business over a regular job and setting up his own venture ensured he gets the requisite exposure.

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Team behind Ignite Intent[/caption]Besides Rinkesh, Ignite Intent is backed by a team of experienced advisors and outsourcing partners including experienced individuals like Jubin Joshi, their marketing advisor from Canada and Nikunj Shah, IT advisor among others. Rinkesh aims to solve problems in crowdfunding like will the person who is providing support be rewarded in time? What if the person hosting the cause runs away with the money? Or what if Ignite Intent makes away with the money? To address these problems, Ignite Intent started with projects that have a credible orgin – like an existing Project at IIT-B or the Orion Racing projects. The people working on these projects require financial help to create a quality product and Ignite Intent lends them the helping hand.

Crowdfunding could well turn out to be an important aspect for college projects. Besides college projects, Ignite Intent is also helping raise funds for a startup called – and has managed to so far raise 7% of the total funds it requires. It is not just crowdfunding but also about reaching out to likeminded individuals helps them sustain.

With a bottom-up approach, Ignite Intent focuses not just on college projects and entrepreneurs who are difficult to categorise, but also does approach funding of music albums, films etc. Ignite Intent wants to be differentiated by following these principles:

• Remaining in the touch with the intent owners till the end of the project
• Estimated delivery date of project is expected from all the intent owners.
• How to frame the cause in content and discuss with owners the rewards to be given to the benefactor.
• Phase wise customized marketing plan for the cause.
• Provide essential leads to intent owner.
• Show the intent owner and benefactors the site analytics to motive them in their endeavour.

Rinkesh states that, if an intent owner is working hard they get fully funded and thus have to pay lesser fees to Ignite Intent -- a win – win situation! A project tenure is anywhere between 30 – 90 days after which measures are taken to monitor if the funds are being utilized. The founder monitors 80% funded project closely to ensure the funds raised are being utilised for the intended cause.

Apart from funds, benefactors also receive rewards after a project gets funded. Rewards include brainstorming between intent owners and the Ignite Intent team, Skype interactions with the founder of the company who has hosted the project/cause, memorials (name on the website) or cool stuff like t-shirts/hoodies. Rinkesh says they have an edge over other crowdfunding platforms because of their capability to estimate the delivery date for each reward.

The name Ignite Intent was finalised after two weeks of thinking and many discussions with friends and family. Rinkesh’s simple strategy to raise funds via crowd funding is to just “ASK ASK ASK” effectively and without inhibitions.

With Wishberry in competition, it will be interesting to see how much more efforts Ignite Intent will take it to become the top crowdfunding website.