KKR Fund, Emerald Media Injects $50 Million Into Asia’s YuppTV
YuppTV, an online video platform for South Asian audiences, has received a $50 million investment from Emerald Media, an Asian investment fund backed by KKR.
The investment gives Emerald a significant minority stake in YuppTV, which claims a global user base of 400 million. The new capital will help Atlanta, Georgia-based YuppTV to widen its global footprint, expand its content library through original productions and acquisitions, and rapidly grow its paid subscriber base.
YuppTV currently offers more than 250 South Asian TV channels, 5,000 movies and 100 TV shows. Content is provided as a single subscription-based service in the form of live TV, catch-up TV and movies delivered to connected TVs, Internet STBs, smart Blu-ray players, PCs, smart phones and tablets.
It is focused on reaching Indian diaspora audiences in the U.S., U.K., Middle East, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and the Caribbean. It recently launched in South India and is expanding operations to the rest of the country.
The company last year raised ‘series A’ funding from Poarch Creek Indian Tribe of Alabama.
Emerald, which has access to $300mm from KKR’s Asian Fund II, is a media and entertainment growth capital fund led by Rajesh Kamat and Paul Aiello, a former head of STAR TV. The company looks to invest approximately $15-75 million per investment to acquire control or significant minority positions in growing public and private media companies.
“We hope to leverage (Emerald’s) 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,” said Uday Reddy, promoter and CEO of YuppTV.
“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,” said Kamat, managing director of Emerald Media.
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