Japan's largest online retail firm Rakuten has announced the acquisition of ebook and audiobook marketplace OverDrive for USD 410 million.
The San Francisco-based techcrunch.com we b site quoted Takahito Aiki, Head of Rakuten's global eBook business as saying that OverDrive's deep content library and relationships with publishers, libraries, schools, and retailers will allow Rakuten to extend its mission of empowerment to new market segments and accelerate the growth of our digital contents businesses.
Rakuten is pushing reading and audio-material and it has also made substantial investments in entertainment content too. It acquired global video platform Viki for USD 200 million in 2013, and it has steadily broadened the scope and availability of its Netflix-like video platform Wuaki, a Rakuten purchase in 2012.
Chat and calling app Viber, which was bought for USD 900 million last year by Rakuten, is seen internally as a key part to extending the reach of Rakuten's vast e-commerce empire to mobile devices and gaining greater tractions in markets like Asia and Latin America
The U.S.-based OverDrive, which was founded way back in 1986 and offers more than 2.5 million titles from more than 5,000 publishers today.