CrowdGather, Inc. (OTCQB:CRWG) today announced a general corporate
update in advance of the Company’s anticipated June 2015 financial
results announcement for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2015. The
Company disclosed it will be designing a crowdfunding platform focused
on cannabis and digital startups which it hopes to launch on CrowdGather.com
in 2016. CrowdGather will also seek to expand its digital cannabis
industry related holdings beyond WeedTracker.com
through both acquisitions as well as internal development projects.
“We have been working on several initiatives and felt it timely to share
some of these with our shareholders in advance of what we believe will
continue to be strong revenue performance for the fiscal year which just
ended April 30, 2015,” said Sanjay Sabnani, CrowdGather’s Chairman and
CEO. “As the performance of Mega Fame Social Casino and Slots continues
to drive an increase in our revenues, cost cutting measures have also
started to show effect. Our company is approaching breakeven on an
operational basis helped by increased revenues and decreased costs, but
resources are tight and obtaining financing to mitigate our short term
debt remains our top priority.
Sabnani continued, “Despite the difficulties we have encountered raising
efficient and cost effective capital as an issuer on the OTC markets, we
had previously increased our forum business to record revenue and
traffic levels and then diverted a portion of our publishing assets to
focus on social gaming through the Plaor acquisition. Now that
acquisition – Mega Fame – has more than doubled in revenues in the
little over one year that we have operated it, bringing us once again to
a position of growing revenues and improving margins.
“It has taken us seven years of being public to get to this point, but
now that we have survived complete cycles in two separate digital
businesses – publishing and gaming – we believe we have acquired the
experience to acquire, build, operate, and grow select digital business
with a discipline towards increased revenues. We intend to now take this
expertise and focus it on the digital cannabis vertical with an eye
towards the future. Through our purchase of WeedTracker.com, an online
community founded in 2005, we are developing a digital cannabis
portfolio. Thus far, we have decided to add our popular hip hop
lifestyle and entertainment community, RapMusic.com, to the cannabis
group due to the high affinity between hip hop and cannabis culture. We
have also started to reach out to other site owners to seek acquisition
opportunities. We are working on a mobile app for WeedTracker, targeting
release by the end of this year. On the gaming front, we intend to
launch our first cannabis themed gaming title, Weed in Hollywood,
sometime this summer.
“Perhaps the most exciting thing for us is the prospect of launching
CrowdGather.com as a crowdfunding portal under the new SEC guidelines
for startup issuers in 2016. Our focus will be to help cannabis and
digital startups raise funding from a large network of investors we hope
to attract to CrowdGather. I only wish something like what we are
envisioning had existed for us when we went public in 2008. Going
forward, our business model will be quite simple, while we drive
revenues and earnings from our digital assets – sites, games, and apps –
we will use crowdfunding as our way of building a digital business
ecosystem for the future. In all cases, we will pursue legal and
permissible opportunities to give our shareholders an ever increasing
exposure to the growth of the cannabis sector as a vertical. We realize
that crowdfunding can be a competitive field, but we believe our online
and social media experience may give us some strategic advantages while
our own struggles with funding will definitely give us empathy for the
startups we seek to help.”
Concluding his remarks Sabnani said, “We are excited about the future in
a way we have not felt in a while, but our short term debt and growth
capital deficit issues both need to be addressed in order for us to
succeed. We remain optimistic that this will happen and that we will be
given what we need to grow this company to the heights it deserves.”
About CrowdGather, Inc.
CrowdGather, Inc. is an investor, acquirer, operator, and owner of
digital assets in the consumer and cannabis sectors. In 2016,
CrowdGather intends to launch a crowdfunding portal at CrowdGather
to assist cannabis and digital startups in procuring financing. The
Company’s online publishing network is anchored by DIY community builder Yuku,
while its cannabis holdings include long standing online communities WeedTracker
and RapMusic.
CrowdGather subsidiary Plaor,
a company that specializes in developing highly scalable multi-platform
games, is located in Boston's Innovation District. Plaor produces Mega
Fame Casino, an innovative and highly rated social casino available
on iOS, Android & desktop. With over 20 employees, the Plaor team is a
mix of newcomers and game development veterans from companies including
Rockstar Games, Turbine, Harmonix, Irrational Games, Nanigans, Sony
Online Entertainment, ThoughtWorks, THQ, and Caesars Interactive
Entertainment.
This press release contains forward-looking statements (as defined in
Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E
of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended) concerning future
events and the Company’s growth and business strategy. Words such
as “expects,”“will,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “anticipates,”
“hopes,” “estimates,” and variations on such words and similar
expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.
Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such
forward-looking statements are reasonable, no assurance can be given
that such expectations will prove to have been correct. These statements
involve known and unknown risks and are based upon a number of
assumptions and estimates that are inherently subject to significant
uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond the control of
the Company. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed
or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could
cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited
to, changes in the Company’s business; general economic, industry and
market sector conditions; the ability to generate increased revenues
from the Company’s forums and Plaor’s social casino; the ability to
obtain additional financing; the ability to manage the Company's growth;
the ability to develop and market new technologies to respond to rapid
technological changes; competitive factors in the market(s) in
which the Company operates; and other events, factors and risks
disclosed from time to time in the Company’s filings with the Securities
and Exchange Commission. The Company expressly disclaims any obligations
or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any
forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in the
Company’s expectations with respect thereto or any change in events,
conditions or circumstances on which any statement is based.
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