SPH Ventures leads US$3.5m Series A fundraise for Partipost

Singapore

CROWD influencer marketing startup Partipost has raised US$3.5 million in a Series A funding round led by SPH Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Singapore Press Holdings, the startup announced in a Thursday press release.

The fundraise was joined by local venture firm Quest Ventures, among other investors. SPH Ventures chief executive Chua Boon Ping will join Partipost's board, while Jeffrey Seah of Quest Ventures will join in as an observer.

Founded in 2016, Partipost allows brands to tap a wide base of influencers to run marketing campaigns at scale. Brands it has worked with include Red Bull, Chope and Gojek.

Since the launch of its mobile app in 2018, Partipost has onboarded over 200,000 influencers. The startup says that it has conducted some 2,500 influencer marketing campaigns for over 850 brands in the past year.

Partipost said that its latest investors have "deep domain knowledge in content, artiste management, data and advertising, as well as extensive industry networks which are critical for market expansion plans".

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Jonathan Eg, Partipost's founder and chief executive, said that his firm's latest fundraising round will enable it to develop better technology and collect more data to help brands connect to right influencers, as well as to empower the influencers.

"Having strategic investors, such as SPH Ventures and Quest Ventures, will provide us with domain expertise and market networks to realise our growth vision faster," Mr Eg added.

Julian Tan, chief of digital business at SPH (which publishes The Business Times), said the company is constantly looking to invest in digital businesses that can "add value and synergy" to its media segment.

"Partipost has built up a strong crowd influencer platform and we are working with them to see how best to offer their unique solution to further enhance our offerings to our users and clients," he said.

Mr Chua of SPH Ventures added: "We are impressed by Partipost's strong traction in Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan as a young startup and look forward to partnering it to scale to new markets."

Mr Seah of Quest Ventures believes that Partipost will be able to expand its base beyond the traditional influencer crowd, to include other public-facing figures, to "create vertical unlimited-volume content channels".

"Partipost's potential resides in its ease of onboarding quality content influencers with loyal follower bases. Besides millennial socialites, we believe Partipost will be able to onboard and scale the follower bases for established celebrities, news anchors, society spokespersons and literary writers," he said.

"Partipost will drive a new era of commercial content monetisation partnerships. They are an excellent team of passionate technology entrepreneurs and have our full support," Mr Seah added.