With Fastfilmz acquisition, content sharing app SHAREit ushers into OTT play

File and content sharing platform SHAREit has acquired South Indian movie streaming service Fastfilmz. The financial details remained undisclosed. Fastfilmz, which is valued at around $13 million, had raised $4 million in last series funding round in 2017.

Following the buyout, the file sharing app also declared its founder Karam Malhotra as the new CEO of India.

The acquisition of OTT platform will help SHAREit to increase their regional user base in India. Besides, SHAREit claimed that users would have access to content within lesser data usage and buffering time.

Subscription-based Fastfilmz was floated by Dominic Charles and Karam Malhotra. Since inception, it has been attracted multiple angel investors from the US and Europe. It claims to offer over 1000 HD movies in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

Charles and Malhotra have sourced exclusive rights for a compression technology called Perseus developed by London-based software firm V-Nova. With Fastfilmz app, a three-hour high-definition movie of 3GB in size can be compressed to 783MB.

With over 400-million downloads in four years, India is the largest market for SHAREit. Globally, it has over 1.5 billion users across 200 countries and is currently available in 39 languages.

The social content sharing platform recently collaborated with Times Music which will allow its users to have access to a wider music catalogue that is spread over 27 languages of the Times group owned music service.

SHAREit, also revealed that it is set to start monetising in India through advertisements, and is expecting to see over $5 million in revenues in the first year. It has tied up with brands such as Xiaomi and Samsung, among others, and expect to have 100 brands advertising on its platform.

China growing appetite for content sharing and OTT space in India

In India, file and content sharing space is dominated by Chinese players like SHAREit, Xender, and Zapya. With the entry of Alibaba-owned UCWeb's file sharing app UC Share, the content space is going to be more competitive in coming days.

Besides, OTT has become a hot space in India, and China is not going to leave any stone unturned to grab a major chunk of the online streaming industry in the country.

The Jack Ma-led Chinese Internet major is also planning to launch an over-the-top (OTT) video service in India. The service is likely to be launched in collaboration with its media and entertainment unit UCWeb and Indian portfolio Paytm.

The development was first reported by Quint via IANS.