Bachchans debut as investors but not in India

After we have seen many business tycoons investing in Indian startups, guess who is making a debut in the investment arena. It is Bachchans, one of the most respected families in the film fraternity, have recently pumped in money in an overseas company in Singapore, Ziddu.

The news was confirmed by The Economic Times, which reports that Bachchans have picked up a minority stake in Meridian Tech Pte of Singapore, which owns ziddu.com, a free cloud storage and e-distribution startup. The firm, which also offers a micro payment platform, was founded five years ago by Venkata Srinivas Meenavalli.

"Mr Amitabh Bachchan and his family have invested in Ziddu.com at a valuation of around $71 million. I'm very happy and excited that they have reposed confidence and trust in Ziddu.com," Meenavalli said in response to text messages from ET.

Ziddu.com, said Meenavalli (quoting Google Analytics), was among the top five file-sharing sites across the world, generating 1.2 billion page views with visitors from more than 225 countries. The company logged revenues of $20 million in calendar year 2014.

The deal was executed on Monday. A person in the financial services industry informed the financial daily that the Bachchans had to use funds lying in their offshore accounts to close the deal because banks in India were unwilling to transfer the maximum permissible amount in the absence of a government notification - a problem that many well-heeled individuals have faced in the past few months while acquiring shares and properties abroad through RBI's liberalised remittance scheme (LRS).


The LRS facility allows a resident Indian to invest up to a certain amount in foreign assets. In February this year, RBI in its monetary policy statement announced that the LRS limit was being raised from $125,000 to $250,000 per person per year. However, the finance ministry is yet to approve RBI's decision. A month ago, an RBI spokesperson told ET that "the notification is pending with the government and banks can allow higher remittances only after the circular/notification is issued". "In the meantime," said the RBI official, "any urgent cases get referred to RBI which are considered on merits." It is understood that shares of Meridian were bought for $252,000 using funds in two accounts - a single account of Bachchan Senior and a joint account he shares with son Abhishek.