SPH co-invests US$1.68m in Indonesia's Snapcart

Singapore

SINGAPORE Press Holdings (SPH) on Tuesday announced its first SPH Media Fund investment in the new year - part of a US$1.68 million "pre-Series A" funding into Snapcart, an Indonesia-based cashback and consumer insight app.

Snapcart, which enables consumers to submit photos of their receipts onto the app in exchange for cashback or rewards, uses artificial intelligence to generate real-time consumer insight from these receipts for advertisers and brands.

Chua Boon Ping, chief executive of SPH Media Fund, said that synergies abound between SPH and Snapcart. Through the latter, SPH can show that "advertising with us is still effective", he told The Business Times.

For instance, if Nestle advertises a promotional item in an SPH newspaper and Snapcart discovers that consumers make purchases of the item in the next few days, it shows that marketing dollars with SPH do lead to higher sales at the retail outlets, he said.

With this injection of funds, Snapcart said it would develop new products such as engagement video features and analytical dashboard tools, which will help brands learn consumer behaviour in real-time and formulate their next marketing actions.

The startup will also expand to at least two new markets in South-east Asia, starting with the Philippines early this year. It launched in Indonesia last September, backed by Thai venture capital firm Ardent Capitla.

Asked if Snapcart is planning a Singapore launch, SPH's Mr Chua said: "Yes, and it will work here (as) consumers anywhere are equally incentivised if they are rewarded with discounts or cashback. Brands will also benefit as this will help them better understand consumer insight."

Added Paul Santos, managing partner at Wavemaker Partners (which also participated in Snapcart's latest funding round): "Brands are built on consumer insight. Snapcart leverages unique technology to give companies something they never had before, which is real-time, offline purchase data they can then analyse to strengthen their brand equity.

"Snapcart is also a platform for brands to initiate targeted engagements to the same audience they extract the insights from, hence providing an end-to-end solution for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies."

Other investors in this round are Ardent Capital and Indonesia's SMDV.

Since its launch, Snapcart has amassed over 85,000 monthly active users, and signed on FMCG clients such as Nestle, L'Oreal, Procter & Gamble and Unilever, it reported.

Snapcart is SPH Media Fund's second investment in Indonesia; e-commerce startup Kudo in May 2015 being its first. Its other portfolio ventures include restaurant app Burpple, personal finance portal MoneySmart and internships platform Glints.

Mr Chua said: "We're still very much focused on scalable Internet-enabled business. Given that the funding environment in 2016 will be more challenging, we will be more selective and look for startups with clear monetisation models and regional expansion potential."

SPH shares on Tuesday closed two Singapore cents higher at S$3.93.