VerSe Innovation, the parent company of Indian news aggregation app Dailyhunt, has acquired popular digital kiosk platform Magzter, the two said on Thursday.
The Bengaluru-based startup has fully acquired Magzter, a New York-based company that counted Singapore Press Holdings among its backers. VerSe did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.
The acquisition of Magzter, which offers more than 8,500 magazine titles on its eponymous app, underscores VerSe’s growing focus on reaching and serving the affluent audience, VerSe co-founder Umang Bedi told TechCrunch in an interview. He called the deal Verse’s “largest” acquisition deal to date.
Magzter has amassed over 1 million paying subscribers in India and has a global active user base of 87 million, Bedi said. The company, which offers an all-you-can-use model with annual subscription fees ranging from $20 to $30, has found a distribution and technology partner in VerSe, he added.
daily hunt valued at 5 billion dollars and backed by CPP Investments, Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, Qatar Investment Authority, Carlyle Group and Goldman Sachs, began evaluating the deal with Magzter last year. The Indian firm plans to launch Dailyhunt Premium this year that will include an ad-free experience in addition to the Magzter catalog. Magzter will also continue to operate as an independent service, Bedi said.
Magzter maintains partnerships with thousands of major publishers and offers titles such as The New Yorker, The Economist, Vanity Fair and Time on its app. DailyHunt is working to introduce a custom news feed on Magzter that will curate articles and stories from the digital newsstand app’s extensive catalog of magazine titles.
“This partnership opens new avenues to deliver high-quality content experiences to users across India, further strengthening our goal of providing unparalleled digital reading experiences to our readers,” said Magzter founders Girish Ramdas and Vijayakumar Radhakrishnan. , in a joint statement. They will continue to work at Magzter after the acquisition, Bedi said.
VerSe, which also operates short video app Josh, is increasingly improving its financials and expects to achieve profitable EBITDA at the group level by next year, Bedi said. The startup also recently committed to local social media startup Koo for an acquisition, TechCrunch reported in February. Bedi, declining to comment on specific conversations, said VerSe focuses on deals with companies that are achieving good financial results and growing revenue.