Mumbai: KKR-backed investment platform Emerald Media announced that it is leading a $35 million financing round in Amagi Media Labs, this is in addition to its maiden investment of $50 million in Amagi in October. Premji Invest, the investment arm of Wipro founder Azim Premji, is also participating in this latest fund-raise which is a mix of primary and secondary transaction. Early backers Mayfield India and Nadathur Holdings will remain invested in Amagi. With this the eight-year-old company has in all raised $60 million in funds.
The company is headquartered in Bengaluru with offices in New York City, London, Hong Kong, New Delhi, and Mumbai.
Founded by Baskar Subramanian, Srinivasan KA, and Srividhya Srinivasan, Amagi will use the newly raised capital to enhance its R&D efforts around geo-targeted advertising. Presently, Amagi has 3,000 advertisers on board and competes with the likes Star Network’s Star Adsharp.
Baskar Subramanian, Co-founder of Amagi, said, “Emerald Media, has a strong understanding of the TV Broadcast industry and the OTT space and we are very happy to partner with them. Their domain expertise and regional and global media relationships will help us further leverage the transition of the TV broadcasting industry to the cloud and expand our international footprint.”
Rajesh Kamat, Managing Director of Emerald Media, said, “Amagi has harnessed the transformative power of technology (both hardware and software) to change the way TV networks and brands perceive content delivery and monetization. Their cutting-edge technology is disruptive and the need of the hour. Emerald Media will assist Amagi in driving this change in the broadcast and digital industry by providing a distinctive combination of capital, domain knowledge and management bandwidth.”
Paul Aiello, Managing Director of Emerald Media, added, “Baskar, Srinivasan and Srividhya are the pioneers of targeted-TV advertisement in India. Amagi’s cloud-based managed services and monetization solutions, with high degree of workflow automation make TV networks efficient and future-ready compared to traditional broadcast models. With this investment, we expect Amagi to further expand its reach in the global market.”
Emerald Media ‘s maiden investment of $50 million was announced in October when it bought a large minority stake in YuppTV. Last year, KKR had committed $300 million to back Emerald Media, co-founded by Rajesh Kamat and Paul Aiello, which would invest in a portfolio of assets. Emerald has a mandate to invest up to $75 million to buy majority or significant minority ownership in media, entertainment and digital companies across Asian markets.
