Political Parties

AAP collects over Rs 7 crore in 50 days to fight Lok Sabha polls,2014 Lok Sabha elections: AAP turns to crowdsourcing to raise funds,Arvind kejriwal,yogendra yadav, lok sabha polls 2014,lok sabha elections 2014,kumar vishwas,sanjay singh,madan lal,narendr

AAP collects over Rs 7 crore in 50 days to fight Lok Sabha polls,2014 Lok Sabha elections: AAP turns to crowdsourcing to raise funds,Arvind kejriwal,yogendra yadav, lok sabha polls 2014,lok sabha elections 2014,kumar vishwas,sanjay singh,madan lal,narendra modi,AAP,Aam Aadmi Party 

NEW DELHI: Faced with the challenge of raising anything between Rs 200 crore and Rs 300 crore in the next few months, the AAP is set to crowdsource a large part of its financial target through an art auction and cashless donations via mobile telephony.

The party, which set a new paradigm for electoral funding during Delhi elections through microdonations, bets on crowdsourcing for its national debut.

"The party has limited human resources. Crowd sourcing is the only feasible way to raise huge sums of money," party member Raghav Chadha said.

In the next few days, the Aam Aadmi Party will launch a service that allows potential donors to contribute right from the comfort of their mobile phones. The AAP will initially roll out this plan with Airtel and hopes to rope in more service providers eventually.

"There are about 750 million mobile phone users in this country. Of these, if we can get even 250 million to donate through their cellphones, then it will go a long way in meeting our target," said Chadha who is in charge of rolling out this fundraising platform.

The party, born out of an antigraft movement that transfixed India in 2011, had raised Rs 20 crore for the Delhi polls mostly through micro-donations from the public, a strategy that has been copied by major political parties.
The idea to raise funds through mobile phones will probably be another first in electoral funding.

The mobile phone money transfer application allows a user to load money on to a mobile phone handset and, subsequently, make bill payments, donate and transfer money. "To begin with, our target is to get one crore mobile phone users to donate Rs 100 a month through this application," said Chadha, who is also involved in organising the art auction.

He said the Aam Aadmi Party is working on lining up works from eight to 10 artists well known in auction circuit. "We are trying to reach out to artists personally to ensure the authenticity of the art work. We want to auction about seven to eight pieces from each artist," he said.

Chadha would not reveal the names of the artists his party has approached. The auction is expected to happen this month. The party is keen on one as revenue margins in an art auction are as high as 30% to 40%.

The AAP is looking to contest from at least 300 Lok Sabha seats and, according to people familiar with plans, it could go up to 400. The party has pencilled in an expenditure of around Rs 1 crore per Lok Sabha seat. The AAP has till now raised just Rs 7 crore.

Source: Economic Times

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