Xiaomi leads $25-mn Hungama funding in its 1st investment in an Indian firm

Chinese tech major Xiaomi on Monday said it has led a $25 million (about 165.35 crore) funding round in Hungama Digital Media Entertainment, marking its first investment in an Indian company. The investment will help Xiaomi strengthen its local content and services portfolio in India. “Our Video on Demand (VoD) service in China has 100 million installs and 30 million daily active users. 4G has played a major role in this. India is now on the verge of witnessing a similar data explosion and we wanted to ensure that we have a big play in this segment,” Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra said.

He added that through its investment in Hungama, it will be able to integrate the latter’s content into its own line of smartphones. He, however, declined to comment on the timeline for launching its VoD service in India. Hungama has partnerships with over 700 content creators, and 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. “This will also help us grow together and deepen our understanding of the content sector in India. While we are still working on the exact roadmap, we will start integrating Hungama’s content services into our platforms, which will also include themes and ringtones,” he said. The funding round also saw participation from existing investors Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and billionaire Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.