Singapore: The crowdfunding campaign for the reigning World Champion, Loh Kean Yew of Singapore has successfully closed on Tuesday, Jan 18, 2022, with S$367,878 of the total fund raised in just slightly more than two weeks from 726 donors.
One of the 726 donors was the Karim Family Foundation which donated S$200,000 to show support for the remarkable achievement by the 24-year-old.
The campaign called “Loh Kean Yew Encouragement Fund” was started by Wei Chan, a badminton enthusiast in Singapore on Jan 2, 2022.
In addition to the total amount of S$367,878.00 raised on the rayofhope.sg site, Chan and four other Singaporean business leaders had previously raised another S$50,000 as part of the encouragement fund for Loh.
Therefore, the total sum raised had amounted to S$417,878.
In a YouTube video posted by former World Junior girls’ singles champion – Goh Jin Wei of Malaysia last week, Loh said that he was fine with donations from private donors but not very keen on the crowdfunding idea.
Loh shocked the badminton world on Dec 19, 2021, after beating Kidambi Srikanth of India 21-15, 22-20 in Huelva, Spain to become the first-ever unseeded player and Singaporean to win the BWF World Championships.
However, the BWF World Championships did not offer any prize money, which prompted this crowdfunding campaign to raise money and to serve as an encouragement for Loh.
Earlier this month, the Singapore Badminton Association (SBA) revealed that they are in the process of negotiating a long-term sponsorship deal for Loh which could be worth hundreds of thousands of Singapore dollars.
