China’s Xiaomi leads $25m round for India-based Hungama

This is Xiaomi's first investment in India, as the Chinese firm seeks to expand its customer base in emerging markets. Existing investors including Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Indian billionaire Rakesh Jhunjhunwala also participated in the round.

Hungama started out as a marketing company for online gaming in 2005 before switching focus to video and music streaming services in 2009. It has partnerships with more than 700 content creators and offers over 8,000 movies in different Indian regional languages on its platform. The company claims to have in excess of 65 million monthly users.

Intel Capital invested an undisclosed sum in Hungama in 2012. Two years later, Intel and Bessemer returned with a $40 million round. Hungama will use the new capital to strengthen its movie and television services, which includes adding 1,500 hours of TV content in Indian languages and English.

"Xiaomi has been an internet company from the very start. We think of smart phones as a platform for us to deliver internet services, and this includes content," Hugo Barra, vice president of Xiaomi, said in a statement. "We are investing in Hungama not only to start integrating content into our smart phones, but also to grow together with them and deepen our understanding of the content sector in India."

Xiaomi raised $1.1 billion Series F round in December 2014 led by Hong Kong-based All-Stars Investment. The company is looking to expand into specific emerging markets such as Indonesia, India, Russia and Brazil, based on expected growth in the internet users. It entered India in 2014 and started local manufacturing a year later.

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• Topics
• Greater China
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• China
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• TMT
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