Another major investor includes Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital.
Reliance is eyeing a 15-20% stake in Glance InMobi Pte for which it is ready to shell out up to $300 million.
Glance InMobi Pte is an Indian mobile content provider and artificial intelligence-based software company backed by Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
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Huge Presence In Indian Smartphone User Base
The Bangalore-headquartered Glance is owned by InMobi, a multinational technology company.
Another major investor includes Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital.
It was founded in 2019 and has about 130 million daily active users.
This translates to a presence in more than half of the current user base of India’s top four smartphone brands.
It enjoys a significant presence in the sub-$250 handset segment.
How It Works
It comes pre-installed as a lock screen app and pushes content onto lock screens.
The personalised curated news and entertainment spans categories such as sports, fashion, entertainment, news, travel, tech, business, and more.
Through its Roposo app it also runs a short-video business which is offered in multiple Indian languages.
The deal would give Reliance access to valuable lock-screen real estate on the affordable phones it’s co-developing with Google.
Upcoming JioPhone
Google had invested $4.5 billion in a partnership with Reliance.
The deal included the development of a low-cost 4G smartphone, called the JioPhone Next.
It was going to debut early in September but had to be postponed because of a global shortage of semiconductors.
It is now set to launch in time for the festive season at the end of October.
Upon launch, the phone could help convert its Jio’s 350 million 2G users to 4G smartphone consumers.
Entry Into Short-Form Video Space
The investment could also mark its entry into short-video content, a segment in which users are growing in huge numbers by the day.
Research shows that in 1 year, short form video content is set to become the second biggest segment in terms of time spent.
It is also likely to overtake OTT video content in the coming year.
The numbers have grown especially since the TikTok ban in June 2020 which has helped the growth of Indian short form apps.
Other Strategic Reliance Investments
Other strategic buyouts it has made in the technology space include:
- Saavn (music streaming),
- Haptik? (conversational AI)
- ?Embibe? (learning and edtech)
- Reverie? (Indic language software)
- NowFloats? (SaaS for SMEs)
- Tesseract? (Augmented Reality)
- Radisys (5G and IoT)
It could finalise the transaction as soon as in the next few weeks.
However, there is also a chance that Reliance could back out since deliberations are still ongoing.
Jio Can Spend Rs 18,000 Cr For Selling JioPhone At Cheaper Price: Rs 4000 Expected Cost?
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