Social matchmaker Paktor raises $32.5m to venture into ‘social entertainment’

Photo credit: Paktor.

Singaporean social and dating startup Paktor continues to pack on the funding. Today it announced its latest cash injection, worth US$32.5 million.

The round comes courtesy of US-Asia-bridging venture capital firm K2 Global and Indonesia’s PT Media Nusantara Citra or MNC Media Group. MNC joins the Paktor funding party again after pouring in cash in a round that took place from March through July 2016. Other new and existing investors also participated.

Paktor has been very vocal about wanting to be more than a dating app.

It’s not clear if this is the same round that finally closed or if it’s a new fundraise. We have reached out to Paktor for more details and will update this story when we hear back.

Paktor says it will use the funding to expand further into the “social entertainment arena.”

“We see a strong shift in user behavior within the consumption of interactive media entertainment on mobile platforms and will put the muscle behind Paktor’s strong Asian network and mobile expertise to expand into new business lines within social entertainment,” says CEO and co-founder Joseph Phua in a statement.

The startup has been very vocal since its series B in July 2015 about wanting to be more than a dating app.

“We realized that people meet other people at different parts of their lives,” Joseph told Tech in Asia at the time. “They can be at work, out with friends and drinking, at activities where friends invite new friends. Thinking larger, you can meet new people during every aspect of your life, and what we want to try to do is fulfill and serve those aspects within one platform.”

The Paktor team. Photo credit: Paktor.

Paktor says it has broken 20 million registered users, although it’s not clear how many of them use the service regularly. At the end of 2015 it introduced subscription-based services, which it claims contributed to a 22-fold revenue growth year on year.

The company also launched a number of added features, including user loyalty program Paktor Rewards; Paktor Questions, which rewards users with credits when they guess the answers to random questions about people of interest; and One-Touch Gifts, a quicker way to send virtual gifts through the service. It says these features have helped improve user profile ratings and matches.

Including this round, Paktor has raised a total of US$57.5 million in disclosed external funding.

This post Social matchmaker Paktor raises $32.5m to venture into ‘social entertainment’ appeared first on Tech in Asia.

from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/paktor-funding-round-32-mil
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