Former rival Mixi acquires C2C ticket marketplace for $95M

Winter is finally loosening its grip on Japan, just in time for the 15 employees of Hunza to get the spring break treat of a lifetime. Mixi, the Japanese social network scorched by Facebook and resurrected as a gaming giant, is acquiring their firm for JPY 11.5 billion (US$95 million).

Founded just over two years ago by two Zynga Japan veterans, Hunza operates Ticket Camp, a consumer-to-consumer ticket marketplace. It’s caught on quickly, recording JPY 800 million (US$6.63 million) in merchandise sales for December 2014. That’s a 603 percent rise from the previous December according to Mixi. 80 percent of the traffic comes from mobile. It is available on both Android and iOS.

This is the second acquisition Mixi has made in 2015, following its US$14.8 million splurge on fashion ecommerce site Muse&Co.

These acquisitions are reminiscent of Gree and DeNA’s bids to diversify through acquisitions last year. It appears that Mixi is aware that Monster Strike, the game that has propelled it back to a US$1 billion market cap, is a gift that will eventually stop giving.

If Mixi acquires another one or two young firms in 2015, one thing will be clear – it intends to weather the storm behind a phalanx of startups.