chennai for the past 10 years jothi vellagiri and her husband had been working hard as blacksmiths in vannamada a small town in kerala jothi used to pound iron rods with a 10kg hammer while her husband worked the furnace to make knives and swords all this hard work helped the couple barely earn rs 600 a month but jothi desired a better education for her children she approached the local hope foundation representative who in turn got in touch with rangdeorga crowdfunding website for microcredit rangdeorg posted jothis profile in their borrowers section in february 2009 within a month a private investor came forward to help her on the site and lent her rs 5000 with this loan jothi was able to purchase charcoal and iron rods in bulk this investment ensured regular supply of raw material leading to more financial stability and she repaid her loan with an interest of 85 by march 2010 crowd funding sometimes called crowd financing or crowd sourced capital describes the collective cooperation attention and trust by people who network and pool their money together usually via the internet to support efforts initiated by other people or organisations crowdfunding occurs for any variety of purposes from disaster relief to citizen journalism to artists seeking support from fans to political campaignsjothi is one of rangdes success crowdfunding stories websites like rangdeorg dhanaxcom and arthaplatformcom are trying to build interest in the microcredit space and are reaching out to investors be it regular professionals or high net worth individuals hnis online we try to go where microfinance institutions mfis dont the absolute bottom at the bottom of the pyramid says ramakrishna n k cofounder and ceo of rangde we dont want people to donate but to invest our borrowers are mostly firsttimers and our repayments have rarely defaulted we have had a success rate of 99these websites employ crowdfunding techniques informing and encouraging common people online to act as investors in microfinance schemes aimed at the small borrowers it leads to much larger awareness and participation and helps in covering the previously untapped geographies and communities in crowdfunding platforms like these all an investor has to do is pledge a sum of money online to a borrower whose business plan inspires some confidence in him there is a waiting period where the borrower puts the money to use and sees their profits soar once that happens they start repaying the borrower in monthly instalments jothi staggered her repayment of rs 10850 every week over a period of one year while chennaibased rangde lends mainly to women in rural areas bangalorebased dhanax reaches out to selfhelp groups shgs and asks investors to make a minimum investment of rs 10000 and these sites are seeing brisk business rangde for instance sees contributions of rs 15 lakh in every month dhanax has over 1000 lenders on their sitethe inspiration for these sites comes from international sites like kivaorg which has created a