Cashing in on crowds

The first successful site in the region was Singapore's ToGather, which is similar to Kickstarter - the popular US-based site - but is available to projects in 18 regions including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Australia, China, India, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea.

Even as the use of crowdfunding across the region expands, the focus is firmly placed on China and its potential to generate both projects and funders. Some of the most successful sites from Asia and around the world are looking toward China for much of their future growth.

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An example is Australian crowdfunding site Pozible, which has gathered more than 108 million yuan ($17.7 million) from more than 104 countries and territories over the world in the last three years. Pozible has launched a version of its site in Chinese and recently launched its first project from China. Pozible has already expanded to Singapore and Malaysia as it seeks to take a greater share of the Asian market.

"Singapore and Malaysia are a great bridge into Asia and the amazing potential that comes from the Asian markets," says Rick Chen, Pozible's cofounder. "After all we've been through, Pozible now enjoys a high reputation. I've always wanted to bring it back to China."

Since visiting Shanghai last October, Chen found many Chinese inventions don't have any access to international platforms. So he decided to partner with Ask Lab, a Shanghai social enterprise.

"We were launching our first major Chinese campaign last week actually," he says.

Crowdfunding has increased globalization and helped drive development across ASEAN.

In North America and Western Europe, it is already mainstream. In Asia, it is still a fairly new concept but will continue to grow if it can overcome challenges such as rigid regulations and language barriers across the many markets in the region.

One challenge that sites have to overcome is the fear of copyright infringement. The likes of ToGather.Asia have tried to turn this problem into an opportunity to spread the word about crowdfunding.

Having expanded rapidly around the world over the last few years, there are now more than 800 online crowdfunding platforms.

Perhaps the world's largest is Kickstarter, which began in the US. Over the past couple of years it has broadened out to also include the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Three million funders from every continent pledged $480 million last year.

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