Accel, Norwest, Avataar push Amagi into unicorn club with $95 mn cheque

Amagi, a cloud-based technology provider for broadcast and connected TV, has raised $95 million in a new funding round that pushed it into the unicorn club of privately held technology companies with a valuation of at least $1 billion.

Existing venture capital investor Accel led the round while other existing backers Norwest Venture Partners and Avataar Ventures also pitched in, Amagi said in a statement.

Amagi didn’t disclose its exact valuation, saying only that the round brings its valuation to more than $1 billion, making it a unicorn and one of the highest-valued media tech companies worldwide.

“This is a crucial juncture for our business as we look to hit a hyper growth trajectory by creating a winning combination of goals, processes, team structures and more,” said Baskar Subramanian, CEO and co-founder, Amagi.

Amagi said it will use the money to expand its international footprint as well as its product portfolio. The company will also increase sales and marketing by fivefold across the globe. In addition, it will explore allied and adjunct opportunities in the cloud and video market, and evaluate merger and acquisition (M&A) opportunities that can contribute to revenue growth or add technology capabilities to product lines.

Amagi said it recorded a 108% year-on-year jump in revenue and a 59% surge in the number of customers onboarded in 2021, as it benefited from a boom in video streaming. It didn’t disclose the absolute numbers.

The new funding round comes a little more than six months after Emerald Media, an investment platform backed by private equity firm KKR, and venture capital firm Mayfield India sold their stake in Amagi to Accel, Avataar, Norwest and existing investor PremjiInvest, the family office of Wipro Ltd founding chairman Azim Premji.

At the time, 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.

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 had also pitched in.

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 2,000 channels on its platform and provides content owners distribution coverage in the US, Latin America, Europe and Asia.

The company’s customers include media conglomerates such as NBCUniversal and Paramount; connected TV majors such as Samsung TV Plus and LG Channels; content owners like Tastemade, USA Today and AccuWeather; and streaming companies such as Fubo, STIRR and Rakuten TV.