Asia’s first telco-supported social launchpad and crowdfunding platform Crowdtivate was officially launched for public this Tuesday. Announced earlier in April this year with a mission to ‘empower entrepreneurs in Asia’, Crowdtivate is backed by Singapore’s second largest telecommunication services provider StarHub.
Crowdtivate’s launch was accompanied with the announcement of 12 startup projects short-listed from around 400 submissions. Most of the startups currently listed at Crowdtivate’s website target the Technology domain, while projects related to Social Entrepreneurship, Books, Music, and gaming categories also made it through to the launch-time listings.
StarHub’s Crowdtivate launchpad for entrepreneurs differentiates itself from other similar crowd-funding platforms in several ways. While the crowd-funding and rewards service is in line with other platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, Crowdtivate also offers Crowd Voting and Crowdsourcing as added services for shortlisted startups. Using Crowd Voting, users can validate or ‘up-vote’ a project or provide feedback for it without having to pledge anything. Crowdsourcing is a more original and unique service which lets users or ‘pledgers’ offer their own services and resources to help out startups which they find to be in line with their interests or skills. This way, pledgers can become a more intimate part of the project alongside receiving special rewards for providing their skills.
Any interested group or individual from Asia can list a project idea from allowed categories for free. If the project meets its funding goal, Crowdtivate will charge 4% of total contribution amount as administration fee. PayPal is payment and transactions partner for the service, and will charge 3.9% + 0.50 SGD of individual transactions as well. There are several perks offered by Crowdtivate for shortlisted top projects as well, like mentorship and business incubation for promising ideas via StarHub’s i3 (Innovate, Invest, Incubate) platform.
Crowdtivate, thanks to its unique services and special perks, is an ideal platform for Pakistani entrepreneurs to pursue, especially while there is relatively lesser competition.
