Affle To Acquire 8% Stake In Indus OS For $2.86 Mn

Global technology company Affle signed an agreement to acquire 8% ownership in Indus OS, which owns India’s largest independent indigenous apps store. The deal is reported to be worth $2.86 Mn. Indus OS has in the past, received key investment from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation. 

A homegrown app and content discovery platform – Indus OS’ key offering – “Indus App Bazaar” has more than 400,000 apps accessible in English and 12 Indian languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Odia, Punjabi, Malayalam, Bengali, Assamese and Kannada.

Indus App Bazaar is pre-installed on all Samsung devices and has also partnered with Indian Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). 

Anuj Khanna Sohum, chairman, MD and CEO at Affle said, “This investment reaffirms our commitment to Affle 2.0 growth strategy and building a sustainable market leadership. We derive significant synergies with the Indus OS App Bazaar which through its multilingual capabilities, deeply enhances our vernacular scale and the verticalisation strategy.” 

Rakesh Deshmukh, the co-founder, director and CEO of Indus OS said, “this deal would strategically strengthen our market position and create a leading one-of-a-kind engagement model for Indian users.”

Last month, Affle had acquired a 66.7% stake in Appnext, an independent app recommendation platform. The deal was reported to be worth INR 132 crore. In February, it had acquired Spanish mobile advertising technology company Mediasmart for INR 40.6 crore. 

Earlier this year, Affle India had appointed Sanjay Golan as chief of marketing and omnichannel platforms to strengthen its leadership team. Golan would lead the marketing function and help drive the business growth for Affle’s omnichannel platforms. 

In July last year, Affle India had successfully issued an Initial Public Offering (IPO), as it looked to raise INR 459 crore.

Affle Holdings, the Singapore-headquartered parent entity, counts among its investors Microsoft, D2C (the digital advertising and marketing company established jointly by NTT DoCoMo, Dentsu, and NTT Advertising), Itochu, Centurion Investment Management and Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd.