Bharti Softbank (BSB), a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and SoftBank Corp, has acquired equity stake in ScoopWhoop Media Private Limited.
ScoopWhoop is an India-focused entertainment media startup which creates and curates content that gets shared through social networks. Its website and mobile application clock approximately 20 million monthly page views and have over 8 million unique visitors each month. Over half of all the page views are accessed via smartphones.
BSB Portal Limited will have an effective stake of 36.5 per cent in ScoopWhoop.
Commenting on the partnership, Madhu Nori, CEO, BSB Portal Limited, said, “About half of India’s population are under 25 years old and the use of social networks with smartphones is growing rapidly among this segment. As a result, media consumption patterns are rapidly evolving and this space is ready for disruption."
BSB currently runs the Hike instant messaging platform.
India is the world’s second largest mobile market with over 900 million subscribers. According to the GSMA, India will become the second largest mobile broadband market globally within the next four years with 367 million mobile broadband connections by 2016.