Marrying media with tech

There has been a spate of mergers and acquisitions with media firms taking over tech ones or vice versa. What does it mean?

SHAREit, a file sharing app, has 1.5 billion users worldwide. Of these more than 400 million are in India making it the Chinese firm’s biggest market. Earlier this year, SHAREit acquired FastFilmz, an Indian over-the-top (OTT) app for a reported $13 million. MX Player, which allows users to watch more or less all video formats, has over 175 million regular users in India. In July this year, one of India’s largest media firms, the Times Group paid about $140 million to acquire it.

SHAREit is a tech company that acquired a content firm and Times Group is a media firm that