Amithabh Bachchan and Family has made their first ever overseas investment in online cloud-based file storage service provider Ziddu.com, which is owned by Singapore-based Meridian Tech Pte.
As per a report from ET, shares of the company were bought for $252,000 using funds in two accounts — an account of Bachchan Senior and a joint account with his son Abhishek.
They had to use their funds lying in offshore accounts for the deal as the Indian government is yet to approve higher forex remittance for high net worth individuals who want to acquire shares and properties abroad through RBI’s liberalised remittance scheme (LRS).
The report also claims that the Bachchans were keen to put in about $5,00,000 for Ziddu but had to settle for a lower investment because banks refused to handle remittance beyond $125,000 per person.
Ziddu was founded in 2007 by Meenavalli Venkat and Palacharla Srinivasu. Ziddu.com, which offers cloud-based file hosting and sharing service is among one of the top 5 file sharing sites across the globe. It claims to receive about 1.2 billion page views from visitors of more than 225 countries. In 2014, the company claimed to have generated $20 million in revenues.
Amitabh Bachchan is not the only Bollywood personality making investment in companies. Many other Bollywood stars have investment in start-ups. Salman Khan has investment an undisclosed amount in Yatra.com and owns about 5% of the company. Karishma Kapoor, Shah Rukh Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgan have also made a considerable number of investments in startups that they believe will gloom in coming time.
