MUMBAI: With a drive to have a series of gigs across venues in India this year, Control ALT Delete (CAD) has initiated its eighth edition, which will take place in Mumbai on 13 June at Smaaash. The promoters of Control ALT Delete have raised the bar by targeting crowdfunding of over Rs two lakh, out of which 30 contributors have funded a sum of Rs 45, 000 so far.

Addressing the fact that the event has moved from its rather regular venue- blueFROG to Smaaash, Control ALT Delete, co-founder Himanshu Vaswani said that the latter was a preferred choice as it supported the metal genre better.

For the last edition, the crowdfunded event attracted 800 people to High Spirits, Pune and even managed to make some profit which was divided equally among the artists, with each artist receiving Rs 2578. Vaswani stated, "At the last edition, we were able to make some profit, which we distributed equally among the artistes. The Pune edition was an experimental gig in our list of events, but we got good traction for it."

The crowd-funded event has been transparent about their expenses by uploading a balance sheet for each edition on its social sites. To that Vaswani said, "Transparency is an important factor for Control ALT Delete. We treat all our contributors as our sponsors and it is important that they know our expenses. Every penny given to us for any gig is accounted for and we make sure that there is transparency. People are comfortable contributing because they know where their money is being spent." This has helped CAD attract some honest followers who contribute to their gigs repeatedly, revealed Vaswani.

The eight artistes who will rock out at the upcoming edition include Aberrant (Shillong), Bevar Sea  (Bangalore), Bhayanak Maut  (Mumbai), Cosmic Infusion  (Mumbai), Escher’s Knot  (Bangalore/Chennai),  Kraken – (Delhi), The Minerva Conduct  (Mumbai) and Zygnema (Mumbai). Commenting on the selection process of artistes, Vaswani said, "We bring bands/artistes which other promoters do not bring down due to many reasons. But we try our best to get artistes from across the country that rarely get an opportunity play in cities like Mumbai and Pune."

Even though CAD is crowd-funded, it is open for sponsorships. "However, we believe in integrations rather than orthodox traditional branding of logo on our banners or any other form of communications." For one of CAD’s previous edition, it had ‘Budweiser’ associated with CAD, which did not involve any promotion of the brand via logo presence on their communications.
Going further, Vaswani said that art work is very important for our gigs. "We work with different artistes every edition as that is critical for us. Nevertheless, we do not force anything on the designer. We just provide them the gist of the edition."

CAD has a core team of four members and 10 dedicated volunteers who help them with the gigs.  Vaswani hopes that with a strong team and dedicated fans and followers, CAD can have one more edition this year. He added that CAD members are bouncing a lot of ideas to further expand as a whole.