Open any of the 20 million articles on Wikipedia and the face on the banner making an appeal for donations for the world's largest encyclopaedia will not be that of Jimmy Wales but Sengai Podhuvan. 

Podhuvan, 76, urges users to "consider pitching in Rs 100, Rs 200, Rs 300 or whatever you can" to "keep Wikipedia free" in a tugging-at-the-heartstrings appeal that is the first of its kind by the US-based Wikimedia Foundation that runs the world's most popular source of general reference on the Net. 

This sort of appeal by a Wikipedia author is not standard practice: founder Wales is almost always the face of fund-raising. Moreover, Wikipedia has enlisted several Indians to be the standard-bearers for its fund-raising efforts for 2011-12. And for the first time, it is accepting donations in rupees. "When users see the faces they will realise that anyone from India can contribute, not necessarily money. 

But if it works and everything suggests it is working, next year will have many more," says Hisham Mundol, who leads the Wikimedia Foundation's operations in India. 

Wikipedia, which does not accept advertisements and is funded entirely by donations, describes itself as the fifth most popular website on the planet with more than one lakh contributors worldwide and 12 billion page views every month. From India, there are some 2,000 contributors and 227 million monthly page views. 

Another Indian contributor who is helping Wikipedia raise funds is Karthik Nadar, an 18-year-old student and part-time accountant from Mumbai. 

On the evening of the bombings of the city in July 2011 that killed 26 people, he captured the horror on his phone and kept updating Wikipedia. In his nearly two years as a contributor, he has helped write 2,000 articles. "I get a kick out of being able to share information and learning," he says. 

Wikipedia's tactic of widening the base of its fund-raisers stems from a belief that Wales' appeal is waning. "In 2010, we began to see indicators of banner and Jimmy fatigue," the Wikimedia Foundation wrote in its 2011-12 plan ending in June, for which it hopes to raise $30 million (Rs 150 crore). 

The Indian touch, it seems, is paying off. Halfway through the fund-raising campaign, the foundation has raised Rs 1.1 crore from India. Comparatively, in the whole of last year, it raised less than Rs 1 crore from India.