In Croatia, year after year, there is visible progress in the number of projects financed by crowdfunding, and the amount of money raised is also increasing. In just the past year, more was raised than in total so far, with an annual growth rate of 90 percent.
In domestic crowdfunding campaigns, nearly 10 million kuna has been raised to date, with 5.3 million raised just in 2015, according to research published on the Crowdfunding.hr blog.
− We see a significant shift in the quality of preparation of domestic crowdfunding campaigns compared to previous years. It seems to me that we only lack more technology startups focused on consumer electronics, which perform much better on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, commented the blog’s author Hrvoje Hafner on the research results.
Last year, 63 projects were launched on various crowdfunding platforms, and only 23 raised the requested amount. Indiegogo remains the primary crowdfunding platform in Croatia, with Kickstarter in second place. Here and there, one can find a domestic campaign on some lesser-known platforms. The number of supporters for domestic campaigns in 2015 increased to 7,673 compared to 6,636 in 2014. Hafner also states that the focus has shifted from computer games to community projects, which make up more than 10 percent of launched crowdfunding campaigns in Croatia. The campaign that raised the most money was for equity stakes by business angel Hrvoje Prpić for his online store project Trillenium on the Seedrs platform, which raised 200,000 pounds. The campaign with the most individual contributions was for the controversial device Vitastiq, which measures mineral levels in the human body using a smartphone, with 873 participants.
The crowdfunding industry continues to grow rapidly on a global scale. The latest global survey conducted in March 2015, which covered 463 different crowdfunding platforms, indicates an expected 34 billion dollars raised in the past year. A particular growth is seen in the Asian market, which is often not in focus, where more than three billion dollars was raised just in 2014.
