Glance, which owns video platform Roposo, is acquiring Shop101 to bolster its position in the influencer-led commerce space in India. The acquisition will provide Glance and Roposo end-to-end capability for launching celebrity and influencer-led LIVE commerce.
Piyush Shah, Co-founder of InMobi Group, and Glance President and COO, told PTI that the company feels very strongly that mobile shopping and commerce is going to transform in many ways where there is going to be an interesting intersection of creators, content and commerce. “The acquisition will allow us to leverage their Shop101 entire e-commerce technology and do this globally eventually on Glance and Roposo. It will be a huge pillar of monetization for InMobi, apart from advertising.”
Shah said the 100% stake acquisition in Shop101 will be a mix of cash and equity and that it is a the first major deployment of the funds raised in December. Glance, a part of SoftBank-backed InMobi Group, had announced a USD 145 million investment round from Google and existing investor, Mithril Capital in December last year. With that, the total fundraise by Glance stood at USD 190 million.
The platform delivers artificial intelligence-driven personalized content to screen zero of smartphones. When a Glance user wakes up their phone, their locked screen has new visual and interactive content that is personalized for them. It has more than 125 million daily active users that spend 25 minutes per day using the platform. Roposo has more than 33 million monthly active users who spend 22 minutes daily on the platform. It has about 3 million monthly active creators on the platform
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Shah said the live, influencer commerce model has seen huge success in China, accounting for about 20% of the total e-commerce sales. “Even though it is still in an early phase in India now, the total addressable market for LIVE and interactive commerce in the country is expected to surpass USD 40 billion by 2025. This will be the second most important pillar for monetizing Glance and Roposo beyond advertising.”
He added that as the company goes global, expands and starts monetizing, this commerce will be almost half of their potential revenue in the next 3-5 years.
