Daily Archives: March 23, 2021

News: Tencent Music now has joint labels with all ‘big three’ record labels

• March 23, 2021
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The music streaming arm of Tencent is further tightening its ties with the “big three” record label companies, its major licensing partners. Tencent Music Entertainment announced Tuesday that it has formed a new joint label with Warner Music Group, following similar deals with Universal Music Group in August 2020 and Sony Music Entertainment in early

The music streaming arm of Tencent is further tightening its ties with the “big three” record label companies, its major licensing partners. Tencent Music Entertainment announced Tuesday that it has formed a new joint label with Warner Music Group, following similar deals with Universal Music Group in August 2020 and Sony Music Entertainment in early 2018.

The collaboration will take advantage of “Warner Music’s global resources and experience in supporting artists’ careers, as well as TME’s massive influence in mainland China’s music and entertainment market,” TME says in an announcement.

The joint label established with UMG similarly aims to bring international artists to China, one of the world’s fastest-growing music markets, and take Chinese musicians abroad.

Alongside the label deal, TME and WMG have signed a multi-year licensing agreement, an extension of their decade-long collaboration.

TME has ongoing licensing relationships with all three major record labels and some have manifested in equity relationships. In January, a Tencent-led consortium increased its total stake in UMG to 20%.

TME also operates some of China’s most popular online music services. Through its family of music streaming apps including QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music, TME collectively commands 622 mobile monthly active users as of the fourth quarter.

Paying ratio remains relatively low, however, with 9% of the users paying in the quarter, up from 6.2% in the previous year.

But TME has another major revenue stream that distinguishes it from Western streaming services like Spotify: social entertainment. This category includes the karaoke app WeSing which monetizes through the sales of virtual gifts, which are bought by users and sent to performers they appreciate. It mirrors real-life fan-idol interaction.

The segment contributed $854 million to Q4 revenue, compared to $423 million generated from user subscription and digital music sales.

News: Indian beauty e-commerce Purplle raises $45 million

• March 23, 2021
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Purplle, an e-commerce platform for beauty products in India, said on Monday it has raised $45 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its presence in the world’s second largest internet market. The new round, a Series D, was financed by Sequoia Capital India and existing investors Verlinvest, Blume Ventures, and

Purplle, an e-commerce platform for beauty products in India, said on Monday it has raised $45 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its presence in the world’s second largest internet market.

The new round, a Series D, was financed by Sequoia Capital India and existing investors Verlinvest, Blume Ventures, and JSW Ventures. The new round values the Indian startup — which has raised $95 million to date — at about $300 million, up from $150 million in its 2019 Series C round, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

The new round gave partial exit to IvyCap Ventures, which had invested about $2 million in Purplle in 2015. The venture firm said in a statement that Purplle delivered a 22X return and 1.35x of its entire Fund 1.

“We continue to believe in the growth of the company and therefore we have retained our stake for Fund 2,” said Vikram Gupta, Founder and Managing Partner of IvyCap Ventures.

Eight-year-old Purplle.com, which counts Goldman Sachs among its investors, says it sells nearly 50,000 products from over 1,000 brands. The startup said it has amassed 7 million monthly active users.

“Purplle has been on a robust growth trajectory. Even with a Covid year, we have delivered >90% GMV CAGR for the last 3 years. This, while scaling our private brands successfully; Good Vibes is already an INR 150 Cr [$20.7 million] brand. The investment will help to shape Purplle into a multibillion-dollar, digital-first, beauty and personal care enterprise,” said Manish Taneja (pictured above), co-founder and chief executive of Purplle, in a statement late Monday.

The growth of Purplle is indicative of the growing e-commerce space in India, where users are beginning to purchase fashion and beauty products online. MyGlamm, an omnichannel direct-to-consumer Indian brand, last week raised $24.2 million in a round co-led by Amazon.

“We are excited to partner with Purplle as we believe they have cracked the beauty playbook of value retailing with 3 key tenets – a business built on high retention and low customer acquisition cost (CAC), a wide assortment of brands offering quality at best prices, and an attractive private label portfolio mix. We see Purplle emerging as a dominant beauty destination as the online beauty penetration grows from 10% to 25%+ over the next decade,” said Sakshi Chopra, Principal, Sequoia India.