Brief: Paktor’s M17 bags $40m to entertain Asians with music, livestream, video

Photo credit: imtmphoto / 123RF.

M17, an entity that includes Singaporean dating app Paktor, has an in-house team producing entertainment content spanning music, commentary, and reality television shows, and aims to be an interactive multimedia platform. The company also scouts for original content creators like livestreamers, music producers, and celebrities, whose content will then be broadcasted on music platform KKBox’s media channels.

Competitors: Tinder, Lunch Actually, Bigo Live, BeLive

How it compares to competitors: While M17’s competitors focus either on online dating or serving as platforms for live streaming, M17 has all of these features in its portfolio, and produces its own content.

Traction

• Annualized revenue (an estimate of revenue for a period of time) of around US$100 million in April when it announced the merged entity. Aiming for US$200 million by year-end
• Combined user base of 50 million

Funding details

• Amount raised: US$40 million
• Funding stage: Series A
• Lead investor: Infinity Venture Partners
• Other investors: Vertex Ventures, Yahoo Japan, Majuven, Golden Summit Capital and Korean venture firm, KTB Ventures
• Investment type: Equity
• Purpose: To invest in more content creators, toy with more genres, and expand further within Asia, especially Japan, Indonesia, and Hong Kong
• Total funding to date: Undisclosed