Following a long-standing legal battle with PhonePe, Singapore-based Affle Global (AGPL) on Saturday announced that it has acquired an additional 13.09 per cent stake in Indus OS (OSlabs Pte.) through a secondary purchase of preference shares from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation at an approximate valuation of $90 million .
With this, AGPL and its affiliates now command nearly 60 per cent investor voting rights tied to the issued preference shares in Indus OS.
Earlier, AGPL held around 25 per cent stake in Indus OS, PhonePe 32 per cent, while Samsung Venture held around 18 per cent. PhonePe was in talks with Indus OS’ founders last year to buy out an additional stake to increase its shareholding in the company to 92 per cent.
As of April, there have been out-of-court settlement talks between PhonePe and AGPL. “There has been no conclusion to the out-of-court settlement yet. It’s still on. Samsung Venture was initially negotiating with PhonePe to partially sell its stake, but that didn’t go through. Now, Samsung Venture is selling its entire stake to AGPL and not just 13.09 per cent. It might happen in two tranches,” a source in the know seeking anonymity told BusinessLine.
The announcement comes after AGPL recently nominated Anuj Khanna Sohum to be a Non-Executive Director on the board of Indus OS, which was confirmed by unanimous vote of all the investor directors and founder directors of Indus OS. His appointment is effective from April 21, 2022.
Comments were awaited from PhonePe, while Samsung Venture had declined to comment at the time of publishing the story. Any further viewpoints shared by these entities will be updated.
“AGPL continues to believe in the global potential and growth of Indus OS, underpinning its scalability in India and opportunities in global emerging markets, while emphasising on accountability of corporate governance matters and to ensure good corporate hygiene in all spheres of functions and operations for the benefit of all stakeholders of Indus OS,” AGPL said in a statement.
The mobile marketing company added, “AGPL intends to remain a long-term investor and it looks forward to providing further funding support to Indus OS, strengthening its position to enable a one-of-its-kind app engagement model.”