The crowdfunding talk
Kitabisa’s CEO shares the story in bringing crowdfunding to Indonesia

Crowdfunding started in the US with sites like Kickstarter but it is taking off in Indonesia with a distinctly local flavor through Kitabisa (www.kitabisa.com), the nation’s first social crowdfunding platform. The site has been involved in many major events, such as fundraising for forest fire victims, those affected by the January 14 terrorist attack in Jakarta and even raising funds for Indonesia racing champion Rio Haryanto’s journey to the ranks of Formula 1 racing.
Kitabisa, which translates as “We Can,” allows people to donate online to issues they care about. Since its inception in 2013, it has helped fund almost 1,000 projects, with the total amount collected at Rp 11 billion. Kitabisa charges 5 percent of the donations collected as a service fee for its operations (projects related to emergencies or disasters are exempt from the fee). Most funds come in the form of micro donations, ranging from Rp 50,000-Rp 100,000 per person, an optimistic sign that lots of good people are eager to help worthy projects.
I interviewed the man behind Kitabisa.com, Alfatih Timur, the co-founder and CEO of the platform. Timmy, as he prefers to be known, was recently listed in Forbes Magazine as one of Asia’s Top 30 Under 30 in the sociopreneur category and was the winner of an Indonesia ICT Award in 2014 from the Ministry of Communications and Informatics. He spoke with AmCham about the origins of Kitabisa, the demographics of crowdfunding and what is next for the dynamic platform.
What is the story behind the creation of Kitabisa?
lfatih Timur: Our aim for Kitabisa is actually to take gotong royong [cooperation or mutual aid] online. I have seen lots of fundraising before in Indonesia using personal bank accounts to collect donations. I kept wondering how they could make it accountable, how they can write a report after the project is done?
Indonesian people are very keen to make donations, yet sometimes they do not know where the donations will be channeled or what the impact will be. Meanwhile, lots of people have a great idea or project, but they don’t have enough funds to make the project happen.
Kitabisa is here to help answer the questions and to accommodate fundraising so it can be transparent. At the same time we want to make it viral so we can link people who have money with people who have great projects.
In Kitabisa, you can choose to donate to the issue that you care about. If you are an environmentalist, for instance, you can donate to projects related to the environment, and then you can always get updates from the project owner on progress, and a final report when the project is done.
This idea of crowdfunding comes from the US (Kickstarter and Indiegogo), but I think this is West meets East, Indonesia already has the culture of gotong royong, we just adapted the current trend and took it from offline to online.
Who can create a project with Kitabisa? Who makes up the majority of donors?
Everyone can make project in Kitabisa. However, the majority of project owners are young people ranging from 25–35 years old. Most of them are raising funds for issues on health, or simply do it when they want to help others.
The donors are very diverse, but what I can see is that most of them come from the middle class. The donations on Kitabisa are also increasing year by year. When we launched in 2013, we had around Rp 250 million in donations. The next year, the number increased to Rp 1.5 billion. Now, in 2016, we have collected around Rp 11 billion [since 2013].
What issues has Kitabisa accommodated? Are there any specific issues that attract more donors?
The site offers users the opportunity to make projects on a wide range of issues. We have infrastructure, health, environment, education, technology and creative industry (books, apps etc). However, health and education are the issues that donors fund the most at this time. We have a lot of donors for those sectors, and we can say also that social media is helping us a lot to help people, supporting the issues they care about. Our main traffic sources so far come from Facebook — most project owners also actively invite donors through social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
What challenges do you face running a crowdfunding operation in Indonesia?
I think the challenge is to educate people about fundraising. We have a handful of users who prefer to make donations without logging onto the site. They call our team and ask how they can transfer their money. I think it is actually better for them to understand that transparency matters. We ask them to login because we want the flow of money to be traced easier, and more transparently.
The other thing is the misunderstanding that Kitabisa is simply a place where people can ask for money for themselves. The fact is, the majority of donors on our site are actually coming from the campaign owner. We do not allow someone to raise funds when they are the one that is going to be helped personally by the fundraising. We accept projects when someone is raising donations to help others.
Financially it is also a challenge for us. Now we are not yet profitable enough to cover our operational costs.
Do you have any collaborations with the private sector to help with your operational development? How active are companies in the Kitabisa website?
So far we don’t. Yet. We are still in the process of finding the right format for collaboration with the private sector. However, there are a few companies already — not that many though — who are active in making donation through Kitabisa. Their donations range from millions to hundreds of rupiah.
What are your plans for the future of Kitabisa?
I hope we can grow the donations by at least 10 percent per week. That is our main KPI [key performance indicator]. The growth will not only show our financial impact, but also our social impact on the Indonesian people.
When we started this in 2013, someone said to me “You are far too early to start this in Indonesia.” But then, we were being stubborn. We believed that crowdsourcing is the future. I think this is the right time for people who have ideas and people who have money to collaborate together online. I hope in the future more projects can be funded.
Do you have any tips for donors/companies to find the right project on the site?
When you are browsing for projects, I suggest seeking projects that already have a few donations from the public. The project can be trusted if it has donations from the project owner’s inner circle — because those people will be the first to donate.
Transcript from my interview with Alfatih Timur, the CEO of Kitabisa.com on March 29, 2016. First appeared in AmCham Indonesia Newsletter. Above version was edited from the original version.
