The multinational e-commerce giant Alibaba is planning to buy a minority stake of upto $500 million in Dailyhunt (formerly known as Newshunt), an online news providing platform said two people close to the development reported livemint.
According to the duo, Alibaba has already offered a deal closing at $500 million to Dailyhunt but the news aggregator is looking for more investors, other than Alibaba.
“The talks are, however, not yet conclusive as Dailyhunt is also looking for other funding options apart from Alibaba,” said one of the person aware of the matter, on the request of staying anonymous.
The other person asking for the same quoted, “The deal will be a minority stake sale in which Alibaba is looking to acquire anywhere between 10% to 12%, depending upon the final negotiations.”
Dailyhunt that operates in almost 14 languages in India provides news about all the fields through its application. It claims to gather and report news from about 800 newspapers and channels and has 50 million users using the app for information.
Dailyhunt which is backed by Sequoia Capital, also lists Matrix Partners India, Omidyar Network, Falcon Edge and ByteDance as its investors. Last year, The company raised $25 million in Series D funding led by a Beijing-based content service provider, ByteDance that operates content platform in China, US and Brazil. If the deal between Alibaba and Dailyhunt closes, the e-commerce giant would become the second Chinese investor in the company.
Dailyhunt was mentioned as one of the possible “billion-dollar babies” among India’s internet start-ups by the leading Investment banking company Goldman Sachs Group in 2015.
Apart from its proposal for investment in Dailyhunt, Alibaba is at top of its game as it invested $300 million in Bigbasket, India’s largest online grocery store last month leaving behind Amazon in the race.
Last year, Alibaba Pictures bought a majority stake in Chennai-based Orbgen Technologies Pvt. Ltd which operates ticket-booking platform TicketNew. Alibaba Pictures is a movie and content business managed by Alibaba.