One year after its release, Airfunding, the new crowdfunding platform has been used by over 30 thousand people from more than 140 different countries. Now, it aims to spread its influence in Southeast Asia, starting from Malaysia with projection of almost 300,000 US dollars in collected funds for 2021 alone.
Airfunding is a free global donation-type global crowdfunding platform, created in November 2018 by Japanese startup Kiheitai Inc. In a span of one year, almost 4,000 Malaysian individuals have raised around 25,000 US dollars through Airfunding. The platform is open to all kinds of projects, separated by 10 categories like medical, business, community, disaster and more, however the platform aims to help people with small-scale projects made by individuals or local nonprofit organizations. Individuals are free to set their target amount to collect as long as it is not more than 1500 US dollars.
As of now, Malaysians can pay with Credit cards to give their support to projects. By the start of 2020, Kiheitai offers online banking and e-wallet options for Malaysians’ convenience to channel their fund. With this in mind, Kiheitai also projects that in 2020, there will be around 8,000 projects, collecting around 100,000 US dollars, and by 2021 further grow to 12,000 projects and collecting 300,000 US dollars.
One feature about Airfunding is that unlike big crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe, Airfunding does not have any country restrictions for Southeast Asians to use. This is one reason Kiheitai Inc believes that Airfunding can spread its influence in Malaysia. By simply having a smartphone, project owners can start their crowdfunding anytime.
Other than that, Airfunding is a keep-it-all crowdfunding platform. With this feature, project owners will get all of their funds regardless of the amount they have collected. The most successful Malaysian project in Airtripp platform was started by a 13-year old student from Penang Free School, named Malique Ammar bin Mohd Yassin who wanted to collect money so that he can participate in the 2019 World Scholar’s Cup debate tournament. He managed to collect $1660, and passed his initial goal of $1,500 to successfully fund his trip to attend the tournament on June 21 2019. Another great example is a project made by a 33 year-old Indonesian from Padang, West Sumatra, called Wahyu Bagus Setiadi, where he needs financial support to pay for his cranial surgery. Even Though his project still has around 2 months left before finishing, at this point he already has collected over $5,000. With the same spirit of helping the people in mind, Airfunding is completely free to use, and the project owners do not have any financial liability tied to Kiheitai Inc., other than the small platform fee.
One peculiar thing about the platform is that it houses an international community of altruistic people from developed countries such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, etc. who regularly support different platform projects with the sole motivation of helping people who are in an unfavourable economic situation. The way to reach this community is simple: once the support of 3 nearby people has been achieved, the project is published worldwide and is visible to 10 million people from more than 200 different countries.As such, wider visibility and greater probability of success can be achieved. Not only that, there are also growing chances of establishing a relationship with people from across the globe who are also driven by the motivation to eliminate cultural and economic barriers.
One final caveat of Airfunding is that, the platform specializes in small-scale, personal crowdfunding projects. Rather than focusing on helping the mega-corporations with equity crowdfunding or P2P lending, Airfunding provides the normal people who are down on their luck financially for a chance to change their future like people who are burdened with sudden medical fees or your average-joe with a solid idea to start a business.
So far, the platform has already been used by a number of Malaysians to fund their dreams. So far, the platform has already been used by a number of Malaysians to fund their dreams. One of them is a lifestyle blogger called Yen, or more known as ‘Diva in Me’. She had been spending years helping the Lost Animal Souls Shelter (LASS) and later realised that the shelter is financially challenged. With Airfunding, Yen managed to collect a total of 900 US Dollars for her furry friends in a period of 2 months. Another example is a 43 year-old farm owner, Mr Nazrul Azam Bin Man, grows organic vegetable such as long beans, cucumber, pumpkin and winter melon in Perak. Due to the hot weather around March of 2019, his crops yield dropped significantly, and to make matters worse, his water used for the farm was contaminated. This led to him almost stopping his production entirely. But with the help of generous people and Airfunding, he created a project and in just 1 month, he managed to collect 1,069 US dollars.
Overall, we are proud to present this crowdfunding platform to Malaysians which is targeted to serve a number of purposes. Firstly, with Airfunding, the culture of helping people in need can be further reinforced among the society members. Next, with the costly public insurance provided in the country, the crowdfunding platform can be utilised as a financial safety net made affordable for everyone. Lastly, we believe that regardless of financial disparity, all individuals have the rights to live in a society that is accommodated well to achieve their dream.
Any person from any corner of the world can start a crowdfunding project in Airfunding in just a few minutes through this URL: airfunding.
