KKR’s Emerald Media, Mayfield score exits as Accel, others bet on Amagi
Emerald Media, an investment platform backed by private equity firm KKR, and venture capital firm Mayfield India have sold their stake in Amagi, a cloud-based technology provider for broadcast and connected TV.
The two investors sold their stake to Accel, Avataar, Norwest Venture Partners and existing Amagi investor PremjiInvest, according to a press statement. Accel and the three other investors collectively invested “well over $100 million”—or about Rs 740 crore—to pick up Emerald’s and Mayfield’s stake, it added.
This is the second exit by Emerald, a $300-million Asian media and entertainment platform set up by KKR in 2015. In June, it had struck a deal to sell its majority stake in animation studio Cosmos-Maya to PE firm NewQuest Capital Partners to mark its first exit.
KKR had established Emerald out of its second Asia fund and had teamed up with US-based investment firm The Chernin Group for the purpose. The platform is led by managing directors Rajesh Kamat and Paul Aiello.
Mayfield was the first institutional investor in Amagi, having backed the company in its Series A round of $5 million (Rs 30 crore) in 2013. KKR led the company’s Series D round of $35 million (Rs 237 crore) in December 2016. At the time, Mayfield and PremjiInvest—the investment arm of Wipro founding chairman Azim Premji—had also pitched in. The Series D round had taken the total funding for Amagi to $60 million.
“Emerald Media and Mayfield India were early investors in Amagi. They invested at a time when cloud technology in broadcast media was in its infancy,” said Baskar Subramanian, co-founder and CEO, Amagi.
Amagi had started in 2008 in India as a cloud-based geo-targeted TV advertising company. It pivoted in 2018 towards SaaS-based broadcast and streaming of 24×7 live linear channels. The company supports over 800 channels on its platform and provides content owners distribution coverage in the US, Latin America, Europe and Asia.
Amagi’s clients include Discovery Networks, Fox Networks, NBCUniversal, Vice Media, and Warner Media. It said its revenue grew 136% in the fiscal year ended March 2021 and the number of new customers jumped 44%.
