Meet the first-time director who raised Rs 20 lakh via crowd-funding

How director Nicholas Kharkongor used crowd-funding to raise Rs 20lakh for his film, Mantra, starring Rajat Kapoor and Kalki Koechlin

In 1991, our then finance minister Dr Manmohan Singh presented the LPG model (Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation) to encourage free trade. The model paved the way for foreign trade, and a decade later, the country was swept over by the India Shining campaign. First-time director Nicholas Kharkongor (42) sets his film, Mantra, around the same that time, when indigenous companies were being shut down, and mergers with foreign investors were common.

A still from Mantra, starring Koechlin and Rajat Kapoor

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The film will see the light of day this month after a successful two-month crowd-funding campaign. The makers have raised over Rs 20 lakh on Wishberry, and Kharkongor tells us that more than half of the collection has come from the NRI population. “Counts as foreign trade, I suppose,” he says, adding, “People who live outside the country are more interested in what’s happening in India than the ones living here.”

“No response was a common reaction. Eventually, I figured out the kind of film I wanted to wasn’t formulaic cinema. I gave up chasing big producers,” says Kharkongor.

By the end of the year, he had found crowd-funding. Further, Onir’s National Award-winning film, I Am (which raised Rs 1 crore online) and Kannada film-maker Pawan Kumar’s Lucia (raised Rs 50 lakh in 27 days), convinced him about the model.

Director Nicholas Kharkongor (left) with actors Adil Hussain and Kalki Koechlin

It helped that Kharkongor had one crucial area already covered: a solid cast. He had assisted director-actor Kapoor on the latter’s movie, Fatso (2012), and had established a friendship with the actor. Kapoor, in turn, helped rope in Koechlin.

The film studies the effects of the changing economic policies of the ’90s, through a dysfunctional family dealing with the bankruptcy of their business. “It was an international event. We were all affected to some extent. I studied business for a while at IIM, Calcutta. Though I dropped out, I had a keen interest in studying the consequences of the reforms. This was just my form of expression,” says Kharkongor.

Nicholas Kharkongor’s debut film, Mantra, releases on March 17