Early stage funds such as Veranium Capital, Riso Capital, Suicide Innovation Fund, Sigurd Ventures, AngelList, Pitchwright Ventures, and Angels
K Vijay Shivaram, former co-founder of Rivigo Gajal Kalra etc also participated in the round.
This is Consent’s second funding round since it raised Rs 4 crore seed capital from AngelList, Whiteboard Capital, Pitchright Ventures in August 2020; and marquee like angels
K Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Ritesh Malik of Innov8, Sandeep Agarwal of Droom, Suhail Sameer of BharatPe, and Varun Alag of Mamaearth.
Consent co-founder and CEO Sunny Sen told PTI that the company plans to use this fund to hire technical talent, expand sales and marketing teams, and use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools. To develop in-house technology for investment in Content Monetization.
He said that when Consent began commercial operations in April 2021, there was hardly any content behind the paywall, but now large media houses are putting 1 percent of their content behind the paywall.
“We expect this to grow to 3-4% by the end of this financial year. In agreement, we are looking to reduce friction for users to access content on different platforms at an affordable cost based on a pay-per-use model. As well as giving content creators the optimum value of their content,” Sen said.
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The startup currently provides technology to 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.
Sen said the price per article is decided by the media houses and they are also free to customize their offerings to attract the users.
“We now plan to enhance our AI and ML capability to provide ease of access to content, and to provide users with access content based on their usage patterns. We will expand our technology team further over the next 12 months. Will launch more than 15 new products and features in in the areas of payments, engagement and retention, and design,” Sen said.
Concent claims to have achieved 5 lakh users. Sen said the next six months will be crucial for Consent as the venture expands operations beyond India and strengthens its penetration in the Indian subcontinent.
“Increasingly, serious readers are choosing to move to a subscription-based model because finding meaningful content amidst the noise is challenging and time-consuming.
Mitesh Shah, Co-Founder, Inflection Point Ventures, said, “Consent’s pioneering approach to a pay-per-use subscription model promises to deliver premium content and help like-minded people connect, strengthen their partnerships and serve them well. Enables monetization.”