Bharti SoftBank acquires a 36.5% stake in India-based ScoopWhoop

Bharti Softbank, a joint venture company of Bharti Enterprises and Japan-based Softbank Corporation, on Monday said it has acquired 36.5% equity stake in entertainment media startup ScoopWhoop. Though the company did not disclose value of the deal but industry sources said it is worth Rs. 10 crore. “…that it has acquired equity stake in ScoopWhoop Media Private Limited (ScoopWhoop) through BSB Portal Limited,” Bharti Softbank (BSB) said in a statement. 

Bharti SoftBank, a joint venture between business group Bharti Enterprises and SoftBank Corp., announced today that it has acquired a 36.5 percent stake in ScoopWhoop, an Indian-focused media startup. Though financial terms were undisclosed, the deal is interesting because it’s the latest in a series of investments by SoftBank in Indian startups. The Japanese telecom giant recently said that it intends to invest about $10 billion in India over the next few years. SoftBank also recently ramped up its focus on entertainment when it invested $250 million in California-based Legendary Entertainment. Its investment in ScoopWhoop gives SoftBank a chance to add yet another entertainment company to its portfolio, albeit one that has a different model than Legendary Entertainment ScoopWhoop collects entertainment content that is meant to be shared over social media networks, a similar model to Buzzfeed and Upworthy. ScoopWhoop currently claims 20 million monthly page views and over 8 million unique visitors per month across its website and mobile app. About a half of its page views are accessed via smartphones.