Dating app Paktor, often dubbed ‘The Tinder of Southeast Asia,’ just sealed up its move into live-streaming and media content after it announced a merger deal with Taiwanese startup 17 Media.
Under the deal, a new company called M17 Entertainment has been created with shares from both Paktor and 17 Media, company representatives confirmed. They didn’t, however, reveal a valuation for the transaction, although M17 claims to be Asia’s “largest social entertainment company.”
The deal makes plenty of sense in many ways. Paktor CEO Joseph Pua spoke of his desire to expand into social entertainment when his company raised its most recent $32.5 million funding round last October. In addition, Paktor, which is best known for a Tinder-like dating app in Southeast Asia, made a major investment in 17 Media last December, with Pua relocating to Taiwan to become its CEO. Following the merger, he has become M17 Entertainment’s Group CEO.
“This is a corporate move that allows for aligned interest among all shareholders and makes [the] structure clearer to investors,” Pua told TechCrunch in an interview. “That’s something that had been brought up when [we were] fundraising.”
On the strategic side, it brings some clarity to Paktor’s previous intention to move into “social entertainment,” a fairly nebulous term that encompasses any kind of entertainment on a smartphone. Something that, at least, goes beyond dating.
Paktor currently offers four dating apps — core service Paktor and acquired apps Down, Kickoff and Goodnight — while 17 Media’s runs its 17 live-streaming app, photo social network Swag and video group chat service Lit. The new entity will retain all, and expand many, of those services, which Pua told TechCrunch are collectively on course to gross $100 million in annualized revenue based on its most recent month of business, and the recently announced Paktor Labs division. That revenue — and there’s no word on profit; we did ask — is up ten-times over the past six-months. All together, the apps claim a combined 50 million…