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Xiaomi invests $25 mn in Hungama Digital
04 Apr 2016

 

  • Chinese smartphone maker has invested in India by leading a $25 million investment into Hungama Digital Media Entertainment and this is the first investment by Xiaomi in Indian market, reports Hindu Business Line.


  • Other participants included existing investors Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Indian billionaire Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.


  • Services revenue is a big part of Xiaomi’s business strategy in China where it has its own application store and earns from services such as video on demand, music on demand, gaming and cloud storage, adds the report.


  • The company does not have any services business in India yet, reason being the reluctance of Indians to pay for content. The partnership with Hungama is Xiaomi’s first step towards changing that.


  • Xiaomi will soon start integrating Hungama’s content services into its platforms, which will also include themes and ringtones, the company said in a statement.


  • Hugo Barra, Vice President, Xiaomi, said, “Xiaomi has been an Internet company from the very start. We think of smartphones as a platform for us to deliver Internet services, and this includes content. As our user base in India grows and as 4G penetration in India continues picking up, we will start to see more and more consumption of digital media through Xiaomi devices.”


  • Hungama has built partnerships with over 700 content creators, and now has over 8,000 movies in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, Punjabi and six other Indian regional languages on its platform. Over 65 million monthly active consumers access Hungama across platforms for its music, video and movie services.


  • “With this investment, we intend to further strengthen our movie and TV services and in fact, Hungama Play will shortly add 1500 hours of TV content in Indian languages and English,” Neeraj Roy, Founder and CEO, Hungama, said.

 

 

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