Fewcents raises $1.6 million from M Venture Partners, Hustle Fund and others

Singapore-based Fewcents on Monday said it has raised $1.6 million (about Rs 11.7 crore) in funding from M Venture Partners, Hustle Fund and others. Fewcents is a fintech-for-media startup that provides solutions for digital publishers and creators to monetise their content.

The seed round saw participation from angel investors such as Koh Boon Hwee (former Chairman of DBS Bank), Kenneth Bishop (former Managing Director, Southeast Asia, Facebook), Jeremy Butteriss (Partnerships, Stripe) and Shiv Choudhury (Partner and Managing Director, the Boston Consulting Group), a statement said.

Francesco Alberti (former APAC Regional Sales Director, Bloomberg Media Distribution), Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng (President, Summit Media), Prantik Mazumdar (Managing Director, CXM Group, dentsu International Singapore), Saurabh Mittal (Chairman and Founder, Mission Holdings) and Nitesh Kripalani (former Director and Country Head, Amazon Video India) also participated, it added.


The funds will be primarily used to enhance the company's proprietary pay-per-content solution and expand its business footprint globally, the statement said.

"In recent times, users are willing to pay for quality content more than ever. However, users won't subscribe everywhere and hence willingness to commit to monthly subscriptions hovers between 1-5 per cent of active users for any single publisher. Quality content is getting more and more fragmented and hence users seek a simpler way to micro-pay across publishers, especially in their local currency," Abhishek Dadoo, co-founder and CEO of Fewcents, said.

Through its solution, Fewcents helps digital publishers unbundle and monetise premium content, including articles, video and podcasts, via a pay-per-content service that sits on the publishers' sites. It accepts 50 currencies, allowing publishers to monetise their global audience reach.

Rich data insights also help publishers optimise price and invest in stories that resonate most with their audience.

"Fewcents provides incremental revenue to publishers. Our pay-per-content solution gives them a complementary monetisation avenue, in addition to advertisements and subscriptions. Ultimately, this helps publishers refocus efforts on producing high quality content, move away from a culture of just maximising page views and supporting the media and creator industry at large," Dushyant Khare, co-founder and CCO of Fewcents, said.

Currently, Fewcents is working with a variety of publishers and media platforms across Asia and Europe, including vernacular dailies Sakal and Dainik Jagran in India.