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Contreezy- Contributions Made Easy

By Akhil Suhag on 18 Comments / 2065 views

We started our work on CONTREEZY with one view- Make contributions as easy as a walk in the park. We really did believe that people generally want to contribute to the good of the society but at times financial restrictions stop them from doing so. This got us thinking and we asked ourselves “What if people did not really have to pay?”

You can go through the initial post we made in September where we tried to introduce the idea. 

We came up with something we like to call SUSTAINABLE ADVERTISING. It’s easy – for every advertisement that you watch, the advertiser donates a per view amount to a charity of your choice. So all you have to do is sit back and watch a video! So now you are out of excuses for not being able to contribute to the good of the society.

With this in mind we got off to work, a group of young guys with no resources- just an idea we believed in. We decided in 15 mins we are doing this, had no clue where the funds would come from but we thought making a proper business plan and looking for money is a waste of time. We just said- “Let’s do it”, and let’s figure the rest on the way. So we went on our way building our dream, bootstrapping, saving money from everywhere we could, and finding that old piece of jeans so so as to save money by not buying a new one, saving money from the meager college pocket money. This is when we realized every penny could make a difference.

In December we thought why we don’t run a PILOT, tell people what we are about. So we looked for an Advertiser and luckily we had MBAguru onboard and our first NGO, Shrishti collaborated with us. The PILOT ran from 5th feb -8th feb. It was to absolute delight that with the help of social media we were able to have 2500 views in a matter of four days.

 

The money generated, a whooping amount of 25000rs was well channelized by organizing a health camp for an orphanage in Kishangarh, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi.  On 19th Jan, 2012 Contreezy team with a troop of AIIMS doctors successfully organized this camp where around 200 kids were treated of their ailments and were given health education.

This was a small demonstration of the impact we can make. We are now preparing for our actual launch where we bring forth our web portal. Herein people will be able to make accounts and track how much have they contributed. They can choose which cause/NGO they want to support from a variety of available ones. As a reward for the good deed the viewers are doing we will also be giving them REDEEMABLE POINTS that they can use in over 25 different brands.

Please do check out facebook page

 

We are now looking for ADVERTISERS for our actual launch. We are being excellently received by the public, you can gauge that by the response we are getting on out FB page in such a short time. Every penny you spent with us on ADVERTISING will be COUNTED as CSR. So you get ADVERTISING/IMAGE BUILDING/BRAND BUILDING along with fulfilling your CSR responsibilities. We also have other checks in place to make sure the user is watching your advertisement with full intent (for example he has to answer a small question to validate his view, otherwise money is not donated). All we try and do is democratize CSR.

 

 Please find a small presentation that tells you why advertising with us makes sense [it’s on prezi so was unable to embed it here].

We will also soon be launching a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, as we are really in need of some funds. Being a not for profit we do not really have equity that we can trade for investment, which makes getting funded harder.

We really believe we can make a very large impact if we have your support. We are still bootstrapping, we are still living our childhood dream of being a garage startup. But we truly believe we have something great in our hands.

Please feel free to ask any questions.

Thanks!

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18 Comments

  1. akhil, 

    so glad to see the how things have been shaping up at your end!

    do you think you could add a link to your previous post (somewhere on this post), so everyone can easily connect the dots?

    also, for Indiegogo – pls feel free to post your presentation in “Funding Pitches”

    do check out alok’s funding template if you need any help…  

    all the best!

  2. Asha,

    Done!

    Just added the link. We will be working on the Indiegogo campaign over this weekend. I really appreciate your help and all the motivation.

    Regards,

    Akhil

  3. All the best for team Contreezy! Krazy idea! Will support you guys by watching the videos.. 🙂

  4. This sounds awesome ! Especially that you organize the camps yourself rather than simply donating it to a charity.

    I was curious about 2 points in your presentation though :
    1) Why does the money get spent on the charity the USER supports? Shouldn’t it be the corporate’s? That also helps build the corporate’s image.

    2) If CSR is being mandated by the government, perhaps you should be looking at offering your ads as tags to Indian online portals? The corporates get a higher chance of getting views, and the publisher can help meet their mandatory CSR spends?

  5. Mahesh,

    Thanks for your reply.

    I am a little unsure as to what you imply in thr second point. Can you elaborate.

    Regards,

    Akhil.

  6. Thanks for the wishes karthik.

    Do join us to facebook to know when we launch!

  7. I was confused by my answer (2) too 🙂 

    What I was trying to explain : If an advertiser wants audiences, it would be better for their ads to be on websites that have traffic.  Therefore, is there an opportunity for you to have the ads running on these (Publisher) websites, and not only on your site.

    If CSR is mandatory, even the Publishers would have to ‘pay’.  So, can they reach their CSR requirement by running your ad network in lieu of commercial ads.

  8. Like your idea! All the best.

    Are you accepting only videos? Text/Image format could be easy for the viewers as they have to spend less bandwidth and it also helps the small business to take this ad route to detail their product features without spending time in creating videos.

  9. Mahesh,

    I think we can look at that possibility. I sort of like where this could go. Thanks for your input!

    Akhil.

  10. akhil,

    pls google mk (mahesh) and you will realise that his advice weighs in gold 🙂

  11. akhil, this is really very interesting. I know a lot small NGO’s / initiatives who need funds but are unable to raise it effectively. This will def fill in the gap.

    my only question to you guys is, why are you organized as a non profit. If you dont make money, how are you going to sustain Contreezy and meet expenses ?

    All NGO’s who raise money have a certain percentage allocated for fund raising (its a necessary evil without which the funds would not have been raised in the first place).

    I can understand how you want to probably do the right thing and ensure every penny goes towards the cause, but if you guys dont make money, then it will be difficult to go on.

    so i recommend re-thinking the non-profit bit. 

    Cheers and all the best 🙂

  12. Good idea Akhil…Glad to see the creativity….

  13. Thanks Ravishankar!!

    We need all the support we can get!

  14. Hey Abhik,

    Completely get your point. Thanks for taking your time out and reading about us!!

  15. Your heart is definitely in the right place. 

    Couldn’t you simply create it as an advertising channel which contributes a very-high amount of their funds for social benefits? Then, you can go to any platform and all that needs to be communicated to an end-user is that “THIS AD IS BY US”. This can be done by a Logo. 

    This will smoothen so many processes and will be far easier for the industry veterans to understand when you go talk to them. Right now, that might be the most difficult to do. After all, I am not sure how many would want to advertise to people who are watching not to buy their stuff but to feed a hungry child. Doesn’t gel, right?

    You would know better, I am just talking from a few minutes of thought on this matter.

    Best wishes. And feel free to get in touch.

    Dabas

  17. Hi Akhil, 

    All the best for your start up, will surely contact you once my start up opens out to the world, since I have a lot of plans for CSR, may could tie up with you in some parts. 

  18. Great stuff. Will be one the first ones to signup when it launches. Do keep us posted.

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