Secret Origin Story

We have this festival in South India called Golu. This is celebrated by displaying clay dolls that represent the various aspects of life and culture in the traditional South Indian society (sort of like the nativity scene during christmas). So families build these steps and arrange their collection of gods, temples, dancers, weddings, villages and so on, some collected over several generations.

Having lived outside India for the past decade or so, I've always always wanted to celebrate this festival at home but since we didn’t have access to the traditional Golu dolls, we were a bit puzzled about how to proceed.

Then we hit upon the idea of calling our friends over and making our own boxdolls out of discarded materials together!

The first year, I made a Brahma doll out of a milk carton, with one face on each side of the box. I felt this had some potential, but didn’t quite know what to do with it.
The second year, I made a Ganesha and folded it’s ears out of the box, giving it a more 3D look. I felt that perhaps this could work as a book.
The third year came around and I made a Garuda, with magnificent wings folded out of the box from behind. This time I was sure there was some potential to this, but I wasn’t quite sure how to handle the complexities of pitching it to a publishing house to make a book out of it. And If i self published, I wasn’t sure how to handle all the logistics.
The fourth year arrived and it was one week before Navratri, the festival of nine nights, which celebrates all of the Goddesses in India. I came across a project on Kickstarter which had a completely digital offering: someone was designing paper models for Dungeons & Dragons, which the supporters could just print out and assemble themselves. This sort of set of a lightbulb in my head. Would it perhaps work as a Kickstarter project? Its sort of ironic that it took four years of stewing in my head and it all fell into place within a matter of minutes and I was able to launch it as a Kickstarter project within a week.

Campaign Setup & Progress

Mon 18th Sep
- I wrote down what my project was about and why I was doing it, specifically asking myself the question, "why was this so important to me?”.
- I decided on a goal, which I set to a modest goal of 500EUR for 10 Golu Doll Blueprints. My backers could download these, print them and have fun assembling them on their own.
- I also made a list of reward tiers that I could offer, starting from 1EUR (which could get you one doll) up to 25EUR (which could get you a custom avatar doll).
Tue 19th Sep
- I Decided on what dolls I’d make for the initial offering. For this I decided on the 10 most visually unique, iconic and appealing characters from Indian mythology:
  - Brahma-the God of Creation
  - Ganesha-the Elephant God
  - Garuda-the Eagle God
  - Hanuman-the Monkey God
  - Narasimna-the Man/Lion Avatar
  - Shiva-the God of Destruction
  - Krishna-the 8th Avatar of Vishnu
  - Lakshmi-the Goddess of Wealth
  - Durga-the Goddess of Power and
  - Saraswati-the Goddess of Wisdom & Learning
- For stretch goals, I decided that I would add 1 new design for every 50EUR that exceeded the main goal
Wed 20th Sep - Sat 23rd Sep
- This time was spent fervently dreaming up designs for all of the Boxdolls and pulling them out of my imagination using a combination of Illustrator and Photoshop.
Sun 24th Sep morning
- I created the previews of all the campaign rewards and stretch goals
Sun 24th Sep afternoon
- I realized that I now had to record a video for my Kickstarter campaign. The guidelines suggested that campaigns with videos tend to do better, because the audience can see that there’s a real person behind the campaign and could relate to their cause a lot better. I wrote down a basic script with my thoughts and feelings and started rehearsing it in front of my laptop camera. The first few takes were terrible cus I was very nervous, but after the sixth or seventh take I loosened up a bit and unclasped my hands to actually use them while I talked, which helped quite a lot.
Sun 24th Sep night
- With all of the components ready, there was nothing really preventing me from launching it, but I kept deliberating over it, navigating from page to page, re-checking everything and constantly making adjustments. In the end, I decided that I had done enough tweaking and I should just take the plunge. I closed my eyes and hit “Publish”.
- I opened my eyes and nothing had happened. Well, I got an email that my project was published, but that was it. But then my first backer came in within the first 20 mins. I checked it and it was for 1EUR, the first reward tier. Had to start somewhere, I guess. I shared the campaign on Facebook and went to bed.
Mon 25th Sep
- The first marketing messages start coming in with magical offers to magnify my social media presence and give my project more visibility. In exchange for a small fee of course. This whole magic marketing angle felt like it would take away any potential learning experience along with the fun and freshness of a new project. I declined their offers. This was followed by six more offers for giving me publicity, each one claiming to have the best network and that the others out there were terrible. I ignored them.
- I checked later that night and found that the campaign was already 20% funded. I was genuinely surprised that folks were interested in this. I shared an image of the Garuda Boxdoll with my backers on Kickstarter.
Tue 26th Sep
- The campaign was now 35% funded. Progress! I assembled the Ganesha and Hanuman dolls and shared them to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, asking people to check out the project.
Wed 27th Sep
- I had a weird dream that the project had gotten more funding but then I woke up and realized that this was just silly. However I was shocked to see that in fact, it had! My original FB post had gotten more likes, comments and shares. The project got some big backers and was now at 60% funding.
- Later that evening, I printed and assembled the dolls for Narasimha and Krishna and shared them as project updates.
Thu 28th Sep
- I got my first fake spam phishing mail. It had an offer from a nice sounding person offering to feature me and my project on their blog. All I had to do was to send them some pictures and click on a link where I could answer three questions about my project. Clicked on it and nothing happened. Clicked again and a popup was blocked. It slowly dawned on me that this was a phishing attempt, looking to either collect some data from me or make me download a virus. I marked the mail as spam and reported it on kickstarter, enlightened but disappointed that there were so many people trying to leech off of honest campaigns.
- By that evening, the project got a sudden boost and reached 85% funding
Fri 29th Sep
- The project was at 93% funding
Sat 30th Sep
- The project was at 97% funding as more pledges poured in
Sun 1st Oct
- One final push from a benevolent backer pushed the project to 100% funded in under 7 days!
Mon 2nd Oct
- I created the Boxdoll design for the first stretch goal: Kali, the Goddess of Time & Destruction
Thu 5th Oct
- One backer cancelled their pledge and the project dipped below the goal. A little saddened by this, I started researching more Facebook groups related to arts and crafts promotion to share the project on.
Friday 6th Oct
- One new backer had pledged in the highest reward tier and the project was back to being fully funded at 103%
Sun 8th Oct
- A Kickstarter marketing expert reached out to me to inquire about my project, congratulated me on getting fully funded, and then asked if I was interested in overfunding beyond my stretch goal. I was quite thrilled by his interest and said that this was a small project and that I was happy with the funding and while I'd be thrilled at meeting stretch goals, it wasn't a huge priority for me. Sharing the project with people who were interested and giving my backers a great product was always on the forefront of my mind. Unfortunately this was not the answer that the marketing guy was looking for and stopped answering my messages after that, which was a little disappointing.
Tue 17 Oct
- The project was fairly quiet for over two weeks until one more backer made a pledge, taking the project to 106%
Wed 18 Oct
- One more backer made a pledge in the highest tier, taking the project to 110% funding, unlocking the first stretch goal: Kali!
Mon Oct 23
- On the last 24 hours, the project got one more backer in the highest tier, pushing it to 115%. I designed and posted the 12th and last stretch goal doll for Vamana, the dwarf avatar
Tue Oct 24
- To get through the last stretch, I posted additional photos of the dolls. With 4 hours to go, one more backer supported, pushing to 117%
- 3 hours to go, one more backer pushing to 119%
- 15 mins to go, one last backer pushing project to 121% unlocking the second stretch goal: Vamana!
- Campaign ended successfully!
Wed Oct 25
- I sent out the survey questionnaires to all backers, asking the backers in the highest tier what they’d like their custom avatar to look like. The responses started trickling in slowly as I got to work with the rewards.
Thu Oct 26
- I finished designing the final Boxdoll blueprint in PDF format using Indesign
Fri Oct 27
- I sent out the Boxdoll blueprints to all backers, hoping they would have as much fun assembling the Boxdolls as I did designing them!
Sat Oct 28th
- I started sending out the custom avatars. I had a lot of fun putting in tons of detail in these to make them come to life.
- Special Highlights: King Bhumibol of Thailand, Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy and Napoleon Bonaparte

Some interesting metrics

The project ended at a modest 606€, at 121% funding, with 26 backers, involving 12 mythology Boxdolls and 20 custom Avatar Boxdolls!
- The Project video was played 193 times and watched all the way to the end 65% of the time
- 4% came from linkedin (a little bizarre but true)
- 4% came from Instagram (a little disappointing, there seems to be very little way of garnering any sort of interaction with your audience)
- 50% of backers came via facebook (a lot of friends stepped up, sharing their love and support, for which I am eternally grateful)
- 41% of backers came via Kickstarter’s organic search (wow!)

Special Thanks

And last but not least, I would like to give a very special mention of thanks to the following amazingly lovely backers who made this project possible:

Willie, Nak, Clare Wieck, Liss C Werner, Emilee, Karen Wetmore, Bharat Pathiavadi, Linh, Christoph Philipp, Pati Keilwerth, Nate Guerin, Kristina Broens, Kinn Chan de Velarde, Julie Petrytus, Vaishnavi, June Osti, Conlan Rios, Edward Puckett, Maya Shin, Pascal DESBAR-ATS, Mark Pulse, Derek Kocher, Grisan Kv, Steph Parker, Emanuele Libralato & Sudeshna Pantham!

Now Available!

For those of you who missed it, the dolls are available for purchase at

Onwards to the next project!