MUMBAI,
INDIA, 11 OCTOBER 2016: Emerald Media, a Pan-Asian platform
established by leading global investment firm KKR for investing in the media
and entertainment sector today announced that it has acquired a significant
minority stake in YuppTV for US$50mn. YuppTV is one of the world’s leading over-the-top (OTT) video
platforms for South Asian content
offering live TV, catch-up TV and movies on-demand in 14 languages across the
globe. The growth capital will enable YuppTV to further its global
footprint, expand its content library through original productions and
acquisitions, and rapidly grow its paid subscriber base.
Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, YuppTV is
a leading Internet Pay TV platform for South Asians, reaching more than 400
million households across the world. With more than 5 million monthly visitors
accessing YuppTV across 27 integrated devices – with a peak monthly traffic of 20 million
– YuppTV has been setting records across the OTT industry. YuppTV offers 250+
South Asian TV channels, 5000+ movies and 100+ TV shows to worldwide audiences,
with a focus on the USA, UK, Middle East, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia,
New Zealand and the Caribbean. YuppTV continues to revolutionize the way TV and
movies are viewed across the world with over 25,000 hours of entertainment
content catalogued in its library, as well as nearly 5,000 hours of new
on-demand content added to the YuppTV platform every day.
YuppTV has gained considerable popularity
in India having recently launched in the market. With
an initial focus on South
India, the company has gradually expanded to the rest of the country. It has also recently implemented advanced analytics-based
real-time recommendations on Live TV, to make content more discoverable.
Uday Reddy, Promoter and CEO YuppTV, said,
“We couldn’t ask for a stronger partner than Emerald Media. YuppTV is a content
distribution platform with a strong consumer connection, and Emerald Media has
global media relationships. We hope to
leverage their relationships and existing assets Endemol, OML, Fluence and
Graphic India to create original programming and make this platform a next
generation distribution and content powerhouse.”
Rajesh Kamat, Managing Director of Emerald Media, said, “Emerald Media believes in
driving change and value-creation by providing a distinctive combination of
capital, domain knowledge and management bandwidth. The world is moving from traditional consumption
to multiscreen delivery mediums. YuppTV provides a unique combination of
technology, strong content relationships and revenues of scale and will be an
anchor to our vision of building a new age media company.”
Paul Aiello, Managing
Director of Emerald Media, added, “Uday and his team have created an
exceptional online video platform with a loyal subscriber base that realizes
the huge potential of the global Indian diaspora. Our investment and relationship will enable YuppTV to further their strong leadership
position in the rapidly growing OTT space.”
In September 2015, YuppTV had raised its
Series A round of funding from Poarch Creek Indian Tribe of Alabama. YuppTV has had over 10 million mobile app
downloads, in addition to 50 million pre-installs on Samsung TVs worldwide and
300,000+ downloads on LG Smart TV, making it one of the most downloaded Smart
TV Apps. The YuppTV app is also the second most popular app in Android
Playstore in India (Entertainment) and the only South Asian app available on
PS3™ & PS4™. In addition, YuppTV has launched its exclusive on-demand movie streaming service,
YuppFlix, which is backed by an extensive library of more than 5000+ movies
across various languages.
About Emerald Media
Emerald Media is a Pan-Asian platform
established by KKR to invest in the fast-growing media and entertainment
industries across Asia for which KKR has committed up to $300mm from its KKR
Asian Fund II. Emerald Media is led by industry veterans Rajesh Kamat and Paul
Aiello, supported by an experienced team of investment and operating
executives. Paul and Rajesh together have a combined experience of more than 30
years in the industry and bring a unique blend of operational and investment
acumen to their business approach.
The platform primarily focuses on providing
growth capital to media, entertainment and digital media companies. The
platform looks to invest approximately $15-75mn per investment to acquire
control or significant minority positions in growing public and private media companies.
About YuppTV
Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, YuppTV
is the one of the world’s leading over-the-top (OTT) content player for South
Asian Content, live TV, video on demand, and on-demand Movie Solutions. YuppTV
a pioneer in OTT space delivers more than 250 television channels in 14
languages, 4500 videos (daily), movies, and a lot more. Content is offered to
viewers through a single subscription-based service in the form of Live TV,
Catch-up TV and Movies that can be viewed on any of the six screens for video
content consumption - Connected TVs, Internet STBs, Smart Blu-ray players, PCs,
Smart Phones and Tablets.
YuppTV services, currently has one of the industry’s highest content
user engagement rate. Not surprising that millions of satisfied customers
across the globe select YuppTV for their choice of entertainment.
For more information: http://www.yupptv.com/
