Sources: Amazon is in talks with Times Internet to acquire MX Player, a top VOD streaming service in India; Times Internet acquired MX Player for $140M in 2018
Context & Ripple Effects
MX Player has traveled a full valuation cycle inside Times Group: Times Internet paid $140M for a majority stake in 2018 to enter streaming, rode an ad-supported model that reached 175M monthly users and an international push by 2020 (expansion into the US, UK and Australia), and folded its short-video app MX TakaTak into ShareChat's Moj in a deal valued around $900M (the 2022 Moj–MX TakaTak merger).
Now Amazon is in talks to take it over — and the later arc of this story shows why the price matters more than the brand: Amazon ultimately closed an asset acquisition valuing MX Player below $100M, well under its $500M peak, before moving to merge it into Prime Video as a combined free-and-paid catalog.
First-order effects
- Times Internet, whose 2018 bet was an entry ticket into streaming, is positioned to exit the category entirely — selling at a markdown relative to MX Player's earlier valuations rather than funding another round of ad-supported scale.
- Amazon would acquire a top Indian VOD service with an established advertising-funded audience, giving Prime Video a free-tier funnel it does not have to build user by user.
Second-order effects
- ShareChat's merged Moj–MX TakaTak operation loses the strategic anchor of its short-video partner, forcing it to compete for ad budgets and attention against a Prime Video-backed rival with deeper pockets.
- A sub-$100M clearing price for a service once marked near $500M reprices ad-supported streaming assets across India, weakening the hand of any other media owner hoping to sell scale audiences at premium multiples.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Indian streaming consolidates around global platforms that bundle free and paid catalogs — Amazon's eventual plan to fold MX Player's ad tier into Prime Video is the template — leaving standalone local services as acquisition targets or niche survivors.
- The trajectory from $140M entry to discounted exit signals that reach without a subscription or commerce engine struggles as a standalone business, pushing ad-supported video owners toward platform attachment as the default endgame.
The trend: India's ad-supported streaming market is consolidating into global platforms' hybrid free-plus-paid catalogs, with standalone local services exiting at steep discounts to their peak valuations.