Micromax in its plans to expand outside India has taken its first step, by investing in a New York based company MiMedia which provides cloud platform to consumers to help in storing and accessing personal content like photos, videos, music, documents, files. These files can be accessed across any device and at any time by the consumer. This is much like the most widely used Dropbox.
Talking about its first international investment deal, the company said,
“This is the first international investment by Micromax as part of its strategic vision of building a robust eco-system of world class devices and services through innovative technologies from around the world to its consumers,”
Investment in MiMedia is their first deal outside India and the cloud storage company which they are partnering with seems sensible enough for a company into smart phones, tablets, TV’s etc,. We are hoping that Micromax will be providing some free MiMedia cloud storage with their upcoming devices.
Micromax Co-founder, Rahul Sharma, said
“The world is moving to smart devices and, through these strategic investments, we are ensuring that our consumers relish services that enrich their experience,”
Talking about the vision behind the deal struck with MiMedia, Rahul said,
“We invest in companies that are providing revolutionary solutions for our customers and give them scale and access to our ecosystem. As a mobile first country, consumers’ personal media needs to be easily accessed, organized and shared amongst family and friends. We saw this vision and much more in MiMedia.”
This deal appears to be a larger expansion strategy by investing in software based start-ups which can help in providing better software features to their users. Micromax recently announced their revenues for the Financial year 2015 of over Rs. 10,900 crores.
MiMedia is a cloud-based online backup service provided which provides option to back up files through a physical portable drive mailed to the users to avoid low speeds due to slow internet connections.
Chris Giordana, CEO of MiMedia, said,
“We love India and what is happening with digital in that special country. We are proud to have one of India’s leading tech companies now as a strategic investor. MiMedia thinks only about consumers and providing the best experience with their personal media. In Micromax, we saw a similar vision – an incredible company that brings superior phones, at affordable prices, with best of breed software to offer a tremendous value to all of India and their expanding footprint across the globe.”
Micromax has set up an acquisition team who are looking at start-ups related to technology across US, Israel and India to invest up to USD 400 million in over 20 start-ups which range from healthcare gaming, entertainment etc,. Which can be seen from their previous investments in mobile travel search and marketplace ixigo and HealthifyMe a fitness app.
