The Ken, a new subscription-based media startup, has announced that it has raised $400,000 in angel funding from a clutch of angel investors. The investors, who participated in this round, includes Aprameya Radhakrishna, Deepak Natraj, Girish Mathrubhootham, Mahesh Murthy, Pallav Nadhani, Pavan Ongole, Sandeep Mathur, Shan Krishnasamy, Shanmugam Nagarajan, V Balakrishnan and Vijay Shekhar Sharma.
The publication operates on a subscription-only business model, and is primarily targeting that particular domain as its differentiating factor w.r.t to others in this domain. It is focused on technology, startups, business, science & healthcare sectors, pretty much like us. The Ken is focussing on providing one original narrative story each day, kept behind a paywall. Every week, one story a week is made free to read for the subscribers, thanks to the company’s partnership with Paytm — sponsor of the free weekly story.
The company, which formally launched on 3rd October 2016, claims to have broken even in just two weeks of operation. Explaining the funding amount and the subscription-only business model, Rohin Dharmakumar, co-founder of The Ken stated:
While $400,000 may not seem like a lot of money these days, it’s a significant amount to build a focused, lean media business, which has also been generating revenue right from day one. As journalists, we’ve seen too many instances of companies losing their focus and fire in the belly after raising too much money too early on. In contrast, The Ken broke even on a cash-flow basis in week 2 of operations.
We believe that in media, revenue—especially subscriber revenue—needs to be the engine to pull the business along. Investor funding should exist to provide some cushion and slack to supplement revenue in the early years, that’s all.
The Ken was founded by journalists Rohin Dharmakumar, Seema Singh and Ashish Mishra, along with Sumanth Raghavendra. Apart from them, the company also has four other staff writers.
Many new digital media startups have raised a significant amount of funding in recent times. FactorDaily, a new media portal started by journalists Pankaj Mishra, Jayadevan PK, along with Titash Neogi, has also raised $1 million funding from Blume Ventures, Accel Partners, and Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma. Other similar publications, such as Inc42 and YourStory have also raised funding.
