India-based short-form video sharing app VMate has raised more than $100m in funding from e-commerce and internet company Alibaba, 36Kr reported yesterday.
VMate was established in 2017 by UCWeb, a mobile browser developer owned by Alibaba since its acquisition five years ago, and it runs an online platform that lets users record, edit and share their own short videos.
Despite its indirect ownership of VMate, Alibaba set up the transaction as an external investment rather than providing the money internally.
The funding will help VMate tackle stiff competition from TikTok, a similar offering owned by China-based Bytedance which has more than 500 million monthly active users worldwide and a reported 120 million in India alone.
VMate did not specify how it intended to grow its app from a current base of 30 million monthly active users, noting only that heavy spending on marketing would not prove efficient in the Indian market.
Following the investment, the company will join Alibaba’s Innovate Business Group, which is responsible for products including team collaboration tool Dingtalk, in-car smart audio device Tmall Gene and operating system AliOS in addition to an artificial intelligence laboratory.
