Gaana, one of India’s biggest music streaming services, is turning to existing investor Tencent for a new round of debt funding. According to news site Entrackr, the amount is $40m from Tencent’s European subsidiary Tencent Cloud Europe.
This comes nearly 10 months after Gaana’s last round of debt funding: just over $50m from investors including Tencent Cloud Europe. Tencent, meanwhile, led a $115m funding round in Gaana in February 2018. Entrackr estimated that the latest round values Gaana at $570m-$580m, up from $530m last September, when the company also said that it had 185 million monthly active users.
This week’s news is a reminder of the fact that India is one of the few countries (see also: South Africa and various countries in south east Asia) where Tencent has an ownership or investment interest in rival streaming services to Spotify, with which it swapped shares in late 2017.
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