With A Valuation Of US$125 Million, TikTok’s Singaporean Competitor Lomotif Was Acquired

According to Bloomberg, a group of investors including global media and entertainment company ZASH have announced that they will acquire Singapore-based video sharing platform Lomotif for US$125 million, in which ZASH will own 80% of the company.

According to ZASH, Lomotif’s average monthly community size has grown at a rate of 400% in the past three years, and since its opening in 2014, the platform has published and shared more than 740 million videos.

ZASH believes that Lomotif is one of the fastest-growing video sharing platforms in Latin America, Asia, Europe and West Africa, so the acquisition of Lomotif can help it surpass TikTok and Kuaishou short video platforms to become the top global company in the industry.

Jaeson Ma, co-founder of ZASH, also said that Lomotif is a global platform with many followers in Latin America and Asia. In the future, ZASH will work with Lomotif to replicate this successful experience in the United States and other markets.

Short video apps are wildly popular among teenagers and millennials, and while TikTok started this trend, many other similar apps have also gained a sizeable share of customers, such as Instagram’s Reels and Dubsmash.

And according to a research report published by Grand View Research, the global video market value has reached US$50.1 billion in 2020, and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 21% from 2021 to 2028. Another report pointed out that the global online video platform size in the media and entertainment field was US$218 million in 2016, but it is expected that this market size will reach as high as US$915 million by 2025.

It’s no wonder that so many companies want to enter the online video market through acquisitions or investments.

Interestingly, after TikTok was ruthlessly banned by the Indian government, TikTok parent company ByteDance also planned to establish its Asia-Pacific center in Singapore.

Data analysis company GlobalData pointed out that TikTok is laying off employees in India and will increase recruitment efforts in Singapore. Data shows that since August 2020, about 25% of the total job postings of TikTok parent company ByteDance have been distributed in Singapore.

GlobalData's business fundamentals analyst expressed his opinion on this, saying: "ByteDance is planning to make Singapore the center of the Asia-Pacific region except China, in order to seek a neutral position in the tensions between China and the United States."

As a result, TikTok and Lomotif are afraid that they will "face each other head-to-head" in Singapore. In the future, there will only be more and more competitors who want to enter the video field, and their financial resources will become stronger and stronger. If TikTok wants to continue to "dominate", it may need to win several "fierce battles".