MUMBAI:  Amazon on Monday announced that it had closed the acquisition of select assets of MX Player, including the MX Player app, to merge with its ad-supported video-on-demand (AVoD) service, Amazon miniTV. It was in June that several media outlets had reported that Amazon was close to acquiring the once Times group owned app.

Post-acquisition, the app has been renamed as Amazon MX Player. It will continue to provide its library of shows for which it was known to more than 250 million users in India. Among these: Aashram, Dharavi Bank, Campus Diaries, Physicswallah, and Yeh Meri Family. The streamer had also built a fan following for its popular Korean, Mandarin, and Turkish shows dubbed in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu. Viewers will be able to  access the service through apps on mobile, Amazon.in, Prime Video, Fire TV, and connected TVs.

“Today we are bringing together the vast reach of MX Player, with the advertising tech that leverages Amazon’s billions of customer signals,” said Amazon India head of advertising Girish Prabhu. “It’s about enabling all brands, not just the ones selling on Amazon, to reach and deliver relevant advertising to a very large and engaged base across India. It’s about directly measuring outcomes from the very top of the funnel to the very bottom.”

“Amazon and MX Player obsess over customer experience and are both believers in the future of free entertainment,” added Amazon MX Player head Karan Bedi. “Being part of Amazon will let us continue to delight millions of viewers across the country. We will offer high-quality entertainment and streaming experiences faster than we could have done independently, while continuing to keep the service free. This merger will mean great things for our viewers, advertisers and content partners, and will let us bring MX Player to even more people in India.”