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\nJioMusic, housed within Reliance’s telecom arm, was valued at nearly twice the estimated worth of Saavn, according to the terms of the deal.
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\nIn a market notoriously tough to monetise, not only in India but also in developed markets like the US and China, the valuation of the merged entity has left investment bankers and analysts, who track the sector, surprised.
\nAs per the terms of the deal, Reliance Industries has invested $124 million into Saavn at a pre-money valuation of $177 million, a 40-50% discount to the last round valuation, when Saavn raised $100 million in 2015. Th is pegs the post-money valuation of the entity at $301 million. Of the $124 million investment, $104 million is to be paid to existing investors via a buyback, according to sources, and $20 million infused into the company for operations.
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\n
\nJioMusic, housed within Reliance’s telecom arm, was valued at nearly twice the estimated worth of Saavn, according to the terms of the deal.
\n
\nIn a market notoriously tough to monetise, not only in India but also in developed markets like the US and China, the valuation of the merged entity has left investment bankers and analysts, who track the sector, surprised.
\nAs per the terms of the deal, Reliance Industries has invested $124 million into Saavn at a pre-money valuation of $177 million, a 40-50% discount to the last round valuation, when Saavn raised $100 million in 2015. Th is pegs the post-money valuation of the entity at $301 million. Of the $124 million investment, $104 million is to be paid to existing investors via a buyback, according to sources, and $20 million infused into the company for operations.
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Saavn India, founded by Rishi Malhotra, Vinodh Bhat and Paramdeep Singh in 2007, is backed by investors like Tiger Global Management<\/a> and Bertelsmann<\/a>.
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\nExperts said it was unclear as to why JioMusic, with revenues that are a fraction of Saavn, has been deemed to be worth nearly 4x the premoney value of the venturefunded company. Typically, the value of privately held internet companies is based on their market share of usage or of revenues, as well as future prospects on market share and market size.
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\nAccording to analysts, metrics such as number of active users and engagements have been used for JioMusic valuation. But a few of them also point out that the ‘installs’ of the JioMusic app, because of the JioPhone, are disproportionately more than its usage. RIL and Saavn did not respond to email queries sent by ET, including requests to share user metrics.
Jio<\/a> has been investing in a number of content players like Eros<\/a> and Balaji Telefilms<\/a>, and experts tracking the space said the company’s strategy is to drive monetisation through more data consumption. Investments like Saavn is a part of Jio’s user acquisition strategy in a bundled offering. So far, JioMusic is only available to Jio subscribers.
“Jio’s strategy is to build an ecosystem that gives people a reason to consume copious amounts of data, which is the revenue driver. Saavn being an independent service earlier and now part of a larger media house, they individually have a huge library of music and the combined entity will definitely be a significant player in the market but I would not necessarily say dominating the market,” said Jehil Thakker, partner at Deloitte. Going forward, the battle for leadership in the music streaming market will be fought between three local players-JioMusic-Saavn, Times Internet’s Gaana, which recently raised $115 million last month from Tencent, China’s largest internet company, and Bharti’s Wynk<\/a> - besides global players such as Apple Music, Amazon Prime Music<\/a> and Google Play Music. Times Internet is part of BCCL, which publishes The Economic Times.
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\n“In terms of market share, you would presume that about 60-70% is Gaana and Saavn dominated, with both of them having almost an equal share. Gaana would comparatively have a slightly larger subscriber base and the rest would come into the remaining 30-40%,” said an analyst tracking the space. “Definitely see the main four surviving - Jio-Saavn, Gaana, Wynk and Amazon Prime Music. As long as they keep driving data consumption, there is no pressure for them to show profits and losses.”
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