After some deliberations over a possible merger and acquisition deal with airtel Wynk, the plans were abandoned, consequently, Gaana, backed by Times Internet and the Chinese company Tencent, was acquired by Times Group’s subsidiary ENIL in december 2023. The deal managed to evade media attention for quite some time.
It is important to note that Gaana was bought for Rs 25 lakh as disclosed by ENIL in its filing to the National Stock Exchange (NSE). ENIL which is headed by Bennett Coleman is famous for its FM radio brand ‘Radio Mirchi’.Gaana has fundraised over $200 million since its inception and was last valued at around $580 million. Gaana’s merger with ENIL confirms that it was a distressed sale, meaning that the company has given up on the third-party sale strategy.
Details of the deal are still unknown, and there is ambiguity regarding the percentage owned by Tencent in the 14-year-old platform. As per records, Times Internet used to own a majority stake in Gaana and Tencent used to own about 35% until september 2020.To support the working of the platform, Times Internet has been constantly putting in debt into Gaana. In July 2023, the music and podcast streaming service got a debt of Rs 100 crore from Times Internet, which was later converted into equity.
Presently, the Gurugram-based company plans to invest up to Rs 10 crore in debt in Gaana, as seen from the filings with the RoC this week. Yatish Mehrishi, the CEO of the ENIL revealed that the company spent Rs 15 crore in Q1 FY25.Since investments from the neighbouring companies in india are not allowed, Gaana raised two successive debt rounds of $90 million from september 2020 to june 2021, led by Tencent.
Further, there has been a decline in Gaana’s market dominance as the scale of the company shrunk by over 80% to only Rs 12.5 crore during FY24, Mehrishi shared in aninvestors’ meeting in May.
After the acquisition, ENIL put Gaana behind a paywall and hiked the subscription price to Rs 599. These changes were spelt out in its revenue collection for the last quarter of FY24, which stood at Rs 9.5 crore. ENIL’s consolidated operating revenue was down 25.79% QoQ to Rs 113.46 crore and the company posted a net loss of Rs 5.45 crore in Q1 FY25.
Gaana also had a leadership change with the ouster of its CEO Prashan Agarwal who had been with the company for a very long time and was replaced by Sandeep lodha in mid 2021. However, lodha resigned from the position of CEO in July 2023. At present, Gaana is operated by Mehrishi who is the CEO of ENIL. When Times Group was divided between Samir and Vineet Jain, Times Internet has been gradually selling off its investments and portfolio and the portfolio companies during the last three years. It has recently sold its subsidiary ETMoney to 360 One (earlier known as IIFL Wealth) for $44 million. This was the seventh divestment since the beginning of last year.
In june, amazon bought assets of MX Players from Times Internet. In february 2022, the company sold MX TakaTak to ShareChat, and similarly, DineOut was acquired by swiggy in May 2022. In the same year, Times Internet exited three of its portfolio companies including MensXP, iDiva, and Hypp to e-commerce major Mensa.