Mumbai, India. Photo Credit: Nishith Parikh
With an eye on expanding its reach in India’s quick-growing entertainment sector, KKR has taken a minority stake in Mumbai-headquartered ticketing platform and promoter BookMyShow.
KKR just recently shed light on its BookMyShow investment – albeit while opting against disclosing the financial particulars thereof. Founded in 2007 and majority-owned by Sunburn stakeholder Bigtree Entertainment, BookMyShow was in its own words established as a movie-theater-focused ticketing specialist.
19 years later, the business still appears to have a strong presence here; it was only this past March that the Competition Commission of India found the company to be a dominant ticketing player despite also determining that it hadn’t abused its market position.
Even so, BookMyShow now bills itself as “a full-stack entertainment company,” with an emphasis on its namesake live unit.
The latter promotes Lollapalooza India and, as underscored by KKR and BookMyShow, previously staged concerts from international talent including Ed Sheeran, Travis Scott, Linkin Park, Post Malone, and Def Leppard, to name a few.
Meanwhile, TPG- and Elevation Capital-backed BookMyShow is said to operate “India’s largest home-grown transactional video-on-demand” platform to boot. And on the global stage, the company has a presence in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates as well.
Addressing the investment, KKR partner and head of India private equity Akshay Tanna touted BookMyShow’s perceived ability to “play an important role in advancing India’s ambition to become a global entertainment hub and a premier destination for leading artists and acts from around the world.
“We look forward to combining our deep local knowledge with our global investment experience and network to support BookMyShow in its next stage of transformation and further elevate the world-class experiences it delivers to audiences across India,” the former TPG partner continued.
And in remarks of his own, BookMyShow founder and head Ashish Hemrajani touched on the Indian market’s initially mentioned growth.
“The timing of this investment is particularly exciting, as we have significantly expanded our presence across the live entertainment landscape and are seeing the opportunity for India’s entertainment economy grow like never before,” Hemrajani proceeded in part.
Last month, thumpN, described as “India’s first AI-native live entertainment platform,” raised nearly $4 million, after June saw New Delhi-headquartered distribution startup Madverse score a Willard Ahdritz-led seed round.
In another testament to the Indian entertainment space’s rapid expansion – as well as investors’ ambitious expectations – Kuku FM’s parent in June quietly filed for an IPO. According to local reports, the audiobook, podcast, and short-form giant is looking to generate as much as $360 million at a $1.8 billion valuation.