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

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.