Excl: Amagi Media Labs in advanced talks to raise $15M from PremjiInvest

Amagi Media Labs Pvt Ltd, a Bangalore-based technology and media company that facilitates geographic targeting of television advertisements, is in advanced talks to raise $15 million in funding from PremjiInvest, the personal investment vehicle of Wipro chairman Azim Premji, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Techcircle.in.

When contacted, Amagi's co-founder Srinivasan KA neither confirmed nor denied the development, and said, "...we may be able to provide correct facts (about funding) if you wait till tomorrow evening."

Amagi Media was founded six years ago by Srinivasan, along with Baskar Subramanian and Srividhya Srinivasan. Prior to Amagi, they had also co-founded another technology company, Impulsesoft Pvt Ltd., a Bluetooth audio solutions provider. Impulsesoft was later acquired by SiRF, a NASDAQ-listed semiconductor firm based in the US. After the acquisition, the trio held key positions at SiRF, before ushering in Amagi.

Amagi essentially facilitates geographic targeting of television advertisements. Simply put, if viewers in Mumbai and Delhi are watching the same TV channel, they will still see different ads, depending on their geographical location.

The company also offers a 'Cloudport platform' as a new product for technology licensing to broadcasters, which enables international TV networks to deliver localised feeds across geographies and reach out to new geographies by replacing their existing expensive satellite feeds. The platform is designed as a full-featured alternative to traditional channel play-out options (like satellite or fiber) and TV networks can deliver feeds with rich channel branding, diverse language versions and subtitles using Cloudport.

In an interaction with Techcircle in August last year, Srinivasan claimed that the firm had more than 1,500 advertisers on 18 TV channels and its reach had increased to over 200 million TV viewers. Amagi has also partnered with Horse & Country TV, an equestrian sports and lifestyle network that broadcasts in the UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden and Malta, to deliver its signals to cable, satellite and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) operators. Horse & Country TV leverages Amagi's platform to deliver localised channel feeds to current and future markets where the channel is distributed.

Maa Television Network, India's leading Telugu-language television network, has also been using Amagi's platform for offering its 'Maa TV' and 'Maa Movies' channels in Singapore since April 2013.

As of August last year, the company had over 150 employees in more than 20 cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Kolkata.

In June last year, the firm had raised Rs 31.25 crore ($5.3 million) in funding from Mayfield Fund, a global venture capital firm with $2.7 billion under management, with participation from existing investor Nadathur Group, an investment firm founded by Infosys' co-founder NS Raghavan. This was almost a year after the firm bagged Rs 25 crore from Nadathur Group in August 2011.

In terms of competition, Rediff had in 2010 acquired a company called Vubites, a local TV advertising firm founded by Rediff chairman and CEO Ajit Balakrishnan in his individual capacity. Rediff entered the local TV-advertisement market post this acquisition.

PremjiInvest recently invested in Snapdeal.com, the second largest e-commerce company in India, and online fashion & accessories retailer Myntra.com, which recently got acquired by Flipkart.com.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)