One of India’s original techpreneurs behind business process outsourcing company WNS, Neeraj Bhargava, is making a comeback with the launch of digital media and entertainment venture Rainshine.
For starters, Rainshine has acquired significant stakes in digital video network Culture Machine, stand-up comic Vir Das-founded content studio and consultancy Weirdass Comedy, and kids entertainment startup Kinsane.
The firm has spent about $20 million to buy out shareholders in these companies and also invest fresh capital.
Bhargava is also raising $50-75 million for Rainshine and has already raised half the capital, with former Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin and former DreamWorks CFO Michael Montgomery already on board as directors and investors.
Rainshine is also looking at three-four more acquisitions, which it plans to close by June this year. As a part of its roll-up strategy, Rainshine will look at buying 40-90% stakes in the companies and will look to leverage synergies across these platforms from sales to processes like finance and HR. Focus genres for the company include comedy, drama, kids and music. It is looking to monetise the properties through a mix of advertisement and brand solutions, besides selling content to OTT platforms like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Zee5.
Indians are consuming 8 GB of data per month, more than the mobile data consumed by the US and China combined, according to some estimates, as there has been a boom in cheap data since the time Reliance Jio was launched in 2016. Rainshine wants to ride on the back of the data boom as families shift from a single TV screen to multiple screens with each member.
Bhargava, a former McKinsey partner who most recently co-founded tech-focused investment firm Zodius, was the co-founder and CEO of WNS where he lead about nine acquisitions and took it public in 2006 on Nasdaq.
“It is a very similar situation to the BPO market where there were a lot of mom-and-pop players. Then the notion of discipline, processes and how do you attract talent and build it at scale starts to come,” said Bhargava, who will be chairman & CEO of the venture. Co-founders include former Zee Entertainment CFO Mihir Modi and former WNS executive Anuraag Srivastava, who will be the COO.
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