Fewcents, based in Singapore, announced on Monday that it had raised $1.6 million in funding (roughly Rs 11.7 crore) from M Venture Partners, Hustle Fund, and others. Fewcents is a media-focused fintech company that helps digital publishers and creators monetize their content.

Angel investors including 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, Boston Consulting Group) participated in the seed round.

It was also attended by 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).

According to the report, the funds will be used to improve the company's patented pay-per-content approach and extend its global market presence.
"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 percent 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.

Fewcents' solution allows digital publishers to unbundle and monetize premium content, such as blogs, videos, and podcasts, through a pay-per-content service that sits on their websites. It embraces 50 different currencies, allowing publishers to profit from their global scope.

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.

Fewcents is currently collaborating with a number of publishers and media platforms in Asia and Europe, including India's vernacular dailies Sakal and Dainik Jagran.