The short video entertainment space became a huge opportunity for homegrown startups after TikTok’s ban in India two years ago. While a clutch of companies including deep-pocketed ShareChat, Dailyhunt and MX Player entered the segment, over time some such as Roposo, Trell and Chingari pivoted to figure out sustainable business models.
Early this year, ShareChat’s Moj and MX Player’s MX TakaTak announced their merger while Trell fired a significant chunk of its employees in March.
Nexus-backed Mitron TV was one of the players in the segment that has been struggling to find a business model and follow-on funding over the past year. As a result, Mitron TV has been in the market for an acquisition for a while and the company is close to striking a deal with India’s Twitter alternative Koo.
Koo has passed a special resolution to allot Series B3 preference shares to existing investors of Mitron TV in a share swap deal, a regulatory filing with the Registrar of Companies shows. This appears to be a part consideration for the complete acquisition of Mitron TV by Koo(Bombinate Technologies).
Importantly under the share swap agreement, Koo is allotting 3182 Series B3 CCPS worth Rs 28.17 crore against 13,151 shares of Mitron TV.
According to three of Entrackr’s sources, two major players from the short video entertainment space also evaluated Mitron TV for an acquisition, but the talks didn’t move beyond the preliminary stage. The talks between Koo and Mitron TV began in January but Mitron TV denied the development back then when Entrackr reached out for comment.
While the purpose of the acquisition couldn’t be ascertained, Koo may add a layer of short-video in its app to encourage time consumption on the app and attract a young audience. Six months ago, Twitter also announced that it is testing TikTok like reaction videos for tweets.
Queries sent to Koo and Mitron TV didn’t elicit any immediate response. We will update the story as and when they respond.
Founded by Shivank Agarwal and Anish Khandelwal in April 2020, Mitron TV had raised $5 million in a round led by Nexus. 3one4 Capital, Lets Ventures and a clutch of angel investors including Deep Kalra, Amrish Rau and Jiten Gupta also invested in the round.
Launched by Vokal co-founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka, Koo had raised a $30 million worth Series B round led by Tiger Global, Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital and others. According to Fintrackr’s estimate, the company was valued at about $110 million in the round.
