Gaana.com acquires indie music streaming portal Musicfellas.com

Gaana.com, a music streaming service from the house of Times Internet, has acquired the independent music portalMusicfellas.com. With this acquisition, Gaana.com will have access to Musicfellas's music by 700 independent artists and would add to its existing mainstream music catalogue.

Musicfellas will be shut as an independent site and its catalogue will move to Gaana.com after permission from the musicians for the same.

The founders of Musicfellas, Mayank Jain, Gaurav Shahlot and Shubhranshu Jain along with their entire team will join Gaana.

Mayank Jain, CEO, Musicfellas.com, will take the role of a developer evangelist at Gaana, helping developers build similar music apps for the website.

"Acquiring the team and product will help us to be at the forefront of online music broadcasting business in India, particularly on mobile. We are looking forward to build a large suite of applications on Gaana platform and thus expand the developer ecosystem around our product," said Pawan Agarwal, business head, Gaana.com.

Gaana had recently upgraded its mobile apps with new design, radio stations and social discovery features.

Musicfellas was previously funded by TLabs, a technology accelerator and seed investment organisation run by Times Internet, when it launched in mid-2012.

Gaana competes with the likes of Saavn and Dhingana, both VC-backed firms.

For Times Internet, which has been active in investing in the tech space, this is the third acquisition. It snapped restaurant recommendation app Gawbl about six months ago and men's lifestyle digital media property MensXP about a year ago.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)