James Murdoch’s Bodhi Tree venture capital fund cut its planned investment in Viacom18 to $528 million, a 70% drop from the $1.78 billion pledged.
Viacom18, a joint venture between Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance and Paramount Global, has not said why Bodhi Tree cut its pledged investment. The planned investment was initially expected to be completed in October last year, according to a previous statement.
Murdoch announced Bodhi Tree last year with longtime collaborator Uday Shankar. Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar, is the largest investor in Bodhi Tree. Bodhi Tree pledged a $1.78 billion investment in Viacom18 in April last year as the fund’s initial backing.
Reliance said in a statement that it contributes $1.32 billion to Viacom18.
“The partnership will enable Viacom 18 to innovate and disrupt the M&E industry, with Uday Shankar and James Murdoch providing strategic and operational guidance to Viacom 18 leveraging their track record of building iconic media companies. Uday Shankar has been appointed to the board of directors of Viacom18,” Reliance said in a statement.
As part of the investment, Viacom18 said last year it will boost JioCinema, an on-demand video streaming service from telecom giant Jio Platforms. Reliance and Viacom18 have made streaming IPL cricket tournaments free for anyone with an internet connection in India in a bid to lure customers away from Disney, whose Hotstar app gained over 50 million subscribers thanks to the huge popularity of its cricket content.
Viacom18 – a venture between Ambani’s Reliance and Paramount – recently outbid Disney to secure five years of IPL streaming rights for the Indian subcontinent at a cost of $3 billion.
In a joint statement last year, Murdoch and Shankar said they want to “reimagine the entertainment experience on more than 1 billion screens.”
The duo previously ran a fund called Lupa that invested in a number of Indian startups, including short video platform and news aggregator DailyHunt and edtech DoubtNut.
Shankar began working with Murdoch when he oversaw News Corp.’s Asia operations in late 2000. The Indian entrepreneur left Disney in late 2020 after serving as president for the Asia-Pacific region and chairman of operations in India for two years.
He helped the struggling Indian television network in 2007 to become one of the largest media groups in the country. Alongside Ajit Mohan, who has since moved to the leadership position for Snap in Asia, the duo helped the company enter the streaming business with Hotstar, which has since accumulated hundreds of millions of users and is a crown jewel in Disney’s streaming game.