Gaana, a leading digital music service in India, is raising $115 million in new round of funding from Chinese internet giant Tencent, with participation from its seed investor Times Internet.

Tencent is the majority shareholder of Tencent Music Entertainment, China’s largest music
streaming business. It also operates Joox, a leading music streaming platform in Southeast Asia.

Gaana intends to use the capital to further invest into technology to use AI to personalize
music experiences for each consumer, to further develop its subscription product for paying
users, and to develop aligned music experiences for Gaana consumers.

Gaana claims to have crossed 60 million monthly active users in December last year.

Gaana was incubated seven years ago by Times Internet. Over the last four years, its mobile app grew 700 per cent in consumption. Eighty-eight per cent of Gaana’s monthly users come from India.

Prashan Agarwal, CEO Gaana, said: “Music streaming is the future of music consumption
globally, and in India, we’re only 10 per cent of the way towards building a business useful for 500 million Indians. Tencent will be a great partner to help us enable India to access and enjoy unlimited music at their fingertips.”

“Gaana is a leading music streaming platform in India, where millions of users stay tuned to its rich music library including its exclusive Bollywood content,” said Martin Lau, President of Tencent Holdings.

“As more affordable mobile data plans are driving smartphone penetration in India, we believe growth in the music streaming market will accelerate. By investing in and collaborating with Gaana, we look forward to bringing more innovation and better experiences to all Indian music lovers.”

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As part of its 10th anniversary celebrations, e-commerce company Flipkart has provided an opportunity for one of its employees to become the CEO for a day, and 34-year-old Padmini Pagadala was the lucky one to get the chance from among 7,800 staffers.

An employee of four years and an Associate Director at its logistics unit Ekart, Pagadala will ‘replace’ Kalyan Krishnamurthy to take the steering wheel for a day. She was responsible for designing almost all of 17 fulfilment centres of the Bangalore-based company.

A graduate in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, Pagadala has a strong background in supply chain.

Started in 2007, Flipkart is gearing up to launch the 10th anniversary celebrations, with each month being dedicated to a specific initiative. It will begin with sports in April.

Started by former Amazon employees Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, Flipkart is the largest e-commerce marketplace. A couple of weeks ago, the company raises US$1.4 billion in fresh funding from Tencent, Microsoft and eBay. As part of the funding, the firm also acquired eBay India’s operations. There are reports that Snapdeal, its struggling rival, which once was the second largest e-commerce firm in India, is selling to Flipkart, which will make it a formidable entity to take on the likes of Amazon and Paytm.

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Image Credit: Pixabay

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