ConsCent raises Rs 13.26 crore in a bridge round

The start-up that provides monetisation diversification technology to power reader revenue funnels for news, OTT, and other content platforms, ConsCent has raised a total of Rs 13.26 crore in a bridge round.

The round was led by Inflection Point Ventures. The round also witnessed the participation of early-stage funds like Varanium Capital, RiSo Capital, SucSEED Innovation Fund, Sigurd Ventures, Startup Angels Network, AngelList, PitchRight Ventures, and angels like Quess Corp’s Vijay Sivaram, Droom’s Sandeep Aggarwal, former Rivigo Co-founder Gazal Kalra, among others.

This is the ConsCent’s second round since it raised a seed capital of Rs 4 crore in August 2020, from AngelList, WhiteBoard Capital, PitchRight Ventures; and angels like Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Innov8's Ritesh Malik, Droom's Sandeep Agarwal, BharatPe's Suhail Sameer, and Mamaearth's Varun Alagh, alongside others who continue to support the idea and commit to empowering the content ecosystem in India.

ConsCent is a platform that provides a complete micropayment to subscriptions stack with best-in-class analytics and engagement tools. Built on top of a universal login and interoperable payment mechanism, it helps content companies get more paying users and convert them over time into long-term subscribers, and manage their renewals.

The ConsCent login system enables users to binge-pay for premium content on all its network partners without having to repeatedly or separately log into them – without losing any data. 

Digital news publishers and OTT players can use ConsCent to diversify their content monetisation funnels beyond ads and subscriptions by establishing a strong "direct-to-consumer" journey via a combination of:

• Understanding the user via behavioural and predictive analytics.
• Engaging the user via customised targeting and recommendation solutions.
• Easing the Content payment via a Universal login and an Interoperable Payment Mechanism.
• Letting a wider user base sample their premium Content through micropayments and build a subscription flywheel.
• Retain the subscribers via automated customer retention solutions (Launching Soon). 

Some of ConsCent’s existing partners include: India Today Group (India Today, Cosmopolitan, and Business Today), Outlook India Group (Outlook India and Outlook Business), MidDay, Indian Retailer, Amar Ujala, Udayavani, Amar Chitra Katha, EPIC On, Tinkle Comics, and New Indian Express.

Former journalists Sunny Sen and Sounak Mitra founded ConsCent to bridge the gap between access and digital payments for premium content. The company has since evolved into an integrated solution that provides content companies with 360-degree insight into consumers and converts scrolling moments into revenue.

“We are excited about ConsCent’s future, and welcome our new investors. The financing is a validation of ConsCent's vision to create great monetisation opportunities for media and content companies and democratise the consumption of premium content through easy one-click payments, better recommendations, and intelligent engagement. We see this as a multi-billion opportunity as we pioneer the concept of pay-per-use to subscription, coupled with ML-driven recommendations, and intelligent paywalls and engagement," Sen, CEO and Co-founder of ConsCent, said.

“ConsCent will primarily use the new funding to expand the product. "We will expand our technology team and launch over 15 new products and features over the next 12 months, in the areas of payments, engagement and retention, and design. We are also developing an entirely new AI/ML-based personalisation engine to ensure the highest level of content affinity for each content consumer,” added Sen.

"With this funding, ConsCent will be able to achieve faster speed-to-market as we expand our technology and sales teams. ConsCent will use the funding to build futuristic tech solutions that will help media companies understand the digital consumer, engage with them in the best way possible while creating technology solutions that will allow media companies to introduce the world's first intelligent paywall, based on user behaviour understanding of who will pay how much, and for what kind of content, whether it is through pay-per-use or subscriptions," said Mitra, Founder and COO. 

The next six months will be important for ConsCent as the venture eyes expanding its operations beyond India and deepening its penetration into the Indian subcontinent.

Mitesh Shah, Co-founder, Inflection Point Ventures, said, “Content in the form of news is a powerful consumption tool. Increasingly, serious readers are preferring to move to a subscription-led model because amidst the noise it is challenging and time consuming to get meaningful content. ConsCent’s pioneering approach of pay per use subscription model promises to provide premium content and also enables like-minded people to connect, strengthen their partnership and monetise their service. We believe this amalgamation of content and fintech has the potential to disrupt traditional content as we know it.”

"Global trends in digital content consumption are rapidly changing. ConsCent's solution provides data-driven personalised recommendations and monetisation using micro payments and subscriptions. ConsCent empowers publishers to better manage their content lifecycle. We are excited to join them in this growth journey," said Aparajit Bhandarkar, Partner at Varanium Capital.

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