Crowdfunding in Russia : an empirical study

Abstract

The beginning of crowdfunding in Russia is associated with a launch of the crowdfunding platform for creative projects Kroogi. Although it has been 10 years since Kroogi was established, we have to admit that crowdfunding in Russia remains a comparatively small and local market. Definitely, the Russian crowdfunding industry has experienced substantial fluctuations, but nowadays it shows sustainable growth and both market players and the regulator believe in its prospective, so that new players appear, new regulations are expected. In 2017, the biggest Russian crowdfunding platform Planeta.ru celebrated its fifth anniversary and claimed to have raised over 770 million Russian rubles. Still, the rate of successfully funded projects is rather low. To improve the situation it is necessary to find out which crowdfunding projects potential backers are more willing to support. Within the scope of this paper we provide quantitative analysis of open data on 9 179 projects divided by 15 categories from two largest non-equity-based crowdfunding platforms in Russia. The key findings demonstrate the total funding, the largest categories by number of projects, most popular categories within the backers support, the sum of average pledges. Issues for further research and discussion are identified including factors of project success and backers’ motivation.