VerSe Innovation, the mum or dad agency of Indian information aggregator app Dailyhunt, has acquired the favored digital newsstand agency Magzter, the 2 stated Thursday.
The Bengaluru-headquartered startup has absolutely acquired Magzter, a New York-headquartered agency that counted Singapore Press Holdings amongst its backers. VerSe didn’t disclose the monetary phrases of the deal.
The acquisition of Magzter, which gives greater than 8,500 journal titles on its eponymous app, underscores VerSe’s rising focus to succeed in and serve the prosperous viewers, VerSe co-founder Umang Bedi advised TechCrunch in an interview. He referred to as Magzter Verse’s “largest” acquisition deal up to now.
Magzter has amassed over 1 million paying subscribers in India and boasts a worldwide energetic consumer base of 87 million, Bedi stated. The agency, which gives an all-you-can-consume mannequin with annual subscription charges starting from $20 to $30, will discover a distribution and expertise accomplice in VerSe, he added.
Dailyhunt — valued at $5 billion and backed by CPP Investments, Ontario Academics Pension Plan, Qatar Funding Authority, Carlyle Group, and Goldman Sachs — started evaluating the cope with Magzter final yr. The Indian agency plans to launch Dailyhunt Premium this yr that may embrace an ad-free expertise in addition to Magzter’s catalog. Magzter will proceed to function as a standalone service as nicely, Bedi stated.
Magzter maintains partnerships with hundreds of enormous publishers and gives titles together with The New Yorker, The Economist, Self-importance Honest and Time on its app. DailyHunt is working to introduce a personalised information feed in Magzter that may curate articles and tales from the digital newsstand app’s in depth catalogue of journal titles.
“This partnership opens up new avenues for delivering high-quality content experiences to users across India, further strengthening our goal of providing unparalleled digital reading experiences to our readers,” Magzter founders Girish Ramdas and Vijayakumar Radhakrishnan stated in a joint assertion. They’ll proceed to work on Magzter following the acquisition, Bedi stated.
