Amazon buys Indian video streaming service MX Player

Amazon has agreed to acquire Indian video streaming service MX Player from local media giant Times Internet, the e-commerce giant’s latest move to popularize its services and brand in smaller towns and villages in its key overseas market.

The two companies reached a final agreement on the deal Wednesday evening, a source familiar with the matter told JS. The deal values ​​MX Player at less than $100 million, well below the $500 million valuation at which the streamer last raised capital, the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the companies have not yet publicly commented on the deal, told JS . .

The deal concludes a nearly two-year discussion between the two companies in which they sought synergies between their properties. Times Internet and its subsidiary Times Group have been looking to sell off many of their digital properties over the past two years.

JS reported in February last year that Amazon and MX Player were working on a deal. Sony, which was simultaneously looking to merge its Indian division with media house Zee, also expressed interest in acquiring MX Player, but complications with the Zee deal derailed its efforts, according to several sources familiar with the matter.

With MX Player, Amazon gets a distribution and marketing partner that can help make the e-commerce platform more popular and reliable for audiences in India’s smaller cities and towns, a source familiar with Amazon’s strategy told JS. MX Player is especially popular among such demographics, and Amazon’s e-commerce service has long been popular only among urban consumers. Amazon will retain the MX Player brand name, the source said.

Amazon has expanded its video streaming offering in India to make noise beyond the metros. The company charges just $9.50 annually for a variant of the Prime subscription that bundles a version of Prime Video. It also maintains many partnerships with local telecom operators to bundle Prime Video with their pricing plans. In 2021, Amazon launched an additional free, but ad-supported, video streaming service in India.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed that it has agreed to purchase some of MX Player’s assets.

“We are always looking for ways to introduce new products and services that help improve customers’ lives,” an Amazon spokesperson told JS in a statement. “We are excited to continue entertaining India with the great local originals and exclusive content available through our Prime Video and miniTV services in India.”

Reliance, which operates the country’s largest retail chain, leads the video streaming services market in India along with Disney. The two companies agreed in late February to merge their media properties in India. Together, their apps had 55% of the monthly active users of all video streaming services in India. According to UBS, MX Player had a 15% market share. Netflix and Prime Video each had a market share of between 3 and 5%, the investment bank said.

Times Internet acquired MX Player in 2018 for $140 million. Originating from South Korea, the app gained immense popularity in India due to its unique local video playback feature. This functionality allows the app to support a wide range of video file formats, making it highly compatible with affordable Android smartphones common in emerging markets.

Following the acquisition, Times Internet has taken strategic steps to transform MX Player from a local video playing app to a comprehensive video streaming platform. The company invested in equipping the app with a wide range of licensed and original content, including TV shows, movies and games, to meet the growing demand for online entertainment in India – and many international markets, including the UK and the US.

In response to the Indian government’s ban on popular short video app TikTok in mid-2020, MX Player also tried to seize the opportunity and launched its own short video app (called MX TakaTak) to fill the void in the market . Times Internet later sold the short video app to ShareChat, a leading Indian social media platform, in a deal worth more than $650 million.