By Aditya Kalra and Aditi Shah
NEW DELHI (Reuters) -The parent company of India’s ShareChat will acquire local rival MX’s short-video platform in an around $700 million deal, two sources told Reuters, as competition heats up in the sector where foreign investors have placed major bets.
Indian short-video apps have become popular since New Delhi banned ByteDance’s TikTok and some other Chinese apps in 2020 following an India-China border clash. After TikTok was banned, ShareChat’s parent entity, Mohalla Tech, launched a similar short-video sharing app named Moj, which has over time garnered 160 million users and counts Meta Platforms Inc’s Instagram Reels as its key rival.
In a cash-and-stock deal, ShareChat’s parent entity will acquire MX’s short-video platform called TakaTak, the sources familiar with the discussion said.
The deal, valued at around $700 million, could be announced within days, said one of the sources. Reuters is first to announce the two sides have reached a deal.
ShareChat, which is valued at roughly $4 billion and counts Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Twitter among its investors, declined to comment. A spokesperson for MX said she did not have any immediate comment.
With the MX TakaTak acquisition, ShareChat’s parent will now have two short-video apps in its portfolio.
The company has plans to deepen its use of artificial intelligence tools and reach a much wider audience as Moj has roughly 160 million users in India, while MX has roughly 100 million, said one of the sources.
(Reporting by Aditya Kalra in New DelhiEditing by Shri Navaratnam and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
